Media Archives

05 October 2006Special Comment
Why does it seem strange to me that seemingly the only member of the national media who is willing to take the Bush administration to task day in and day out is Keith Olbermann? Maybe it's because he used to...
21 February 2006I Hate NBC
The Olympics comes around every 4 years. If you're a sports fan, it's something to look forward to, something to be cherished. It's the one opporunity for most of us in this international sports deprived country to get a look...
05 February 2006Super Bowl Steeler Sunday
Super Bowl is here again. I'm going to Brennan's in Berkeley to watch the game which I expect to be great -storied franchise against first time upstart. Not that my predictions are worth shit, but I think it's going to...
24 January 2006I Can't Watch CNN
What has happened to CNN? The Most Trusted Name In News. You Can Depend on CNN. A News Channel for America. I don't think so. Whatever has happened, I can no longer watch it. CNN has shed all it's credibility...
27 December 2005Wired Again
I finally caved in and had Comcast come in and install cable and high speed internet at my new place. I've been feeling cut off from the world not watching Jon Stewart and few other things. And I had been...
15 November 2005The Ropes Are Plenty Strong...
I moved to my new place about 2 weeks and I have almost everything set up, unpacked and in the right place. All except cable and Internet service. I can't decide what to do. Honesty I think I can live...
05 October 2005Decline of the Media
When I read things like this , it makes me a) realize that that 2000 election will go down as one of the greatest tragedies in American history and b) wonder with great curiosity what W would be doing with...
31 May 2005Do We Still Need PBS?
PBS President took on this very question in her speech defending the role of PBS at National Press Club last week. It was broadcast on C-Span over the weekend. This is here answer: "Do we still need PBS in a...
25 May 2005The Future of Journalism
John Nichols over at The Nation has a great post about a battle that is brewing over the role of journalism with the future of the country hanging in the balance. He frames the debate as a fight between the...
25 May 2005Bill Maher: Traitor
Bill Maher is a traitor. That is if you take anything Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AK) says seriously. Bachus is up in arms over a Maher sketch on his HBO show Real Time in which Maher points out the Army...
25 May 2005PBS Under Attack
I am huge consumer of PBS. I'm a member of the local PBS station in the Bay Area KQED. I listen to NPR like a fiend. I get most of my TV news from Jim Lehrer. I feel that it's...
24 May 2005Please, Sir, May I Have Some More Gruel?
Pulizter Prize winning journalist Sydney Schanberg of Killing Fields fame sounds off on the sorry state of the modern American Fourth Estate. Here's the meat of his point: Almost without noticing, the press began losing its memory about its crucial...
20 May 2005Media Polarization and You
Media watching is a frightening hobby these days. You can listen to NPR, read the New York Times, US World Report or any of the other media outlets that place value on objectivity (although this is becoming less and less...
17 May 2005Pot to Kettle: "You're Black" Part II
I was flipping around the AM dial this morning and I came across Rush Limbaugh spewing his typical venom to his woefully ill-informed, disillusioned audience. He was pontificating about the Newsweek story and his take boiled down to this: 1)...
05 April 2005As Editors, We Had No Business Being Persuaded by Mountains of Evidence
Okay, We Give Up There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our...
01 April 2005On the Papal Death Watch
I hope I'm not the only one who finds the 24 hour news media's uberobsession with the slow death march of his Excellency morbid. Do we really need papal kidney failure updates on the hour? His passing will hopefully put...
31 March 2005The Chrisitian News Network
Yesterday I watching CNN for about an hour from 8am to 9am absorbing the coverage of the Schaivo business. The coverage was the typical, blanket ghoulish video that CNN has perfected with helicopters following the white van that carried Schiavo's...
09 March 2005Guilty Pleasures: Dooce.com
For a long time now, one of my guilty pleasures has been a daily reading of Heather Armstrong's Dooce.com. Dooce is a blog that details the life of a lapsed Mormon who returned to Utah after being fired from her...
13 January 2005If You Can't Trust Journalists, Who Can You Trust?
Am I just totally blind or have we reached new heights of propagandism in this country? I'm so outraged over the Armstrong Williams fiasco, the latest in administration attempts to control the news with either complete bought and paid for...
12 January 2005God and the Tsunami
Every once in while (more often these day's of Christian governance) you see something that makes you wonder how it's possible to have been born and live in the same country with some of my fellow Americans. I was surfing...
27 October 2004Finally, A Democrat With a Backbone
Lawrence O'Donnell, the moderate Democratic commentator, was on Scarborough Country with Swift Boat front man and long time Kerry adversary John O'Neill and just comlpetely slammed him. You can see the video on the Daily Recycler, but what's more interesting...
19 October 2004Sweet Jesus I Hate Bill O'Reilly
Well, I don't hate Bill, I just dislike him immensely, but this guy does: Sweet Jesus, I hate Bill O'Reilly, International is an organization dedicated to the dissemination of information that exposes Bill O'Reilly for what he is: an ego-driven,...
15 October 2004Rock The Vote, The RNC & The Draft
Take a look at this. It's a cease and desist letter to Rock the Vote from RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie trying to get them to stop discussing the possibility of draft with a threat to remove their status as a...
15 October 2004Jon Stewart to Tucker Carlson: "You're a Dick"
Jon Stewart is my hero. He went on Crossfire today and instead of joking around as the clueless hosts obviously expected him to, he took them task for shirking their responsibility as journalists. Then he actially called Carlson a "dick",...
15 October 2004The Trouble With Sinclair
If you're at all bothered by the impact of media conglomeration in this country and want to see an example of how it is being abused in the 2004 campaign, then the story brewing about the Sinclair Broadcast Group and...
13 October 2004The Choice 2004
Did anyone out there see the Frontline documentary, The Choice 2004, last night? The movie rather brilliantly, I think, juxtaposed the history of the two candidates starting from their days at Yale up to the race for the presidency. It...
23 September 2004Oh, The Irony!
It just gets worse and worse for CBS, 60 Minutes and Dan Rather. It's hard to believe this but it seems that CBS bumped a well-reported story on forged documents regarding the uranium from Niger that helped lead the US...
22 September 2004If There is a Hell...
...I imagine it's a lot like an NPR pledge break that never ends. KQED, the Bay Area affiliate, is finally ending its fall pledge fortnight (seems like an eternity) today and not a moment too soon. I'm a member and...