All Blog Posts from Public Eye

What’s more meta than a blog about blogs and funner than a barrel of monkeys? An ombudsman column roundup of other ombudsmen’s columns, of course!

Today, Public Eye continues its semi-regular look at the issues at play in Print MediaLand -- at least the ones that seem worth passing along. (As sometimes these things get too insider-y even for us.) So keep your hands inside the car at all times, and we’re off:

Heads or Tales:

Quick. Tell me what’s going on in Iraq in six words. Or explain the Red Sox sweep in five. Go ahead and try.

Both Deborah Howell at the Washington Post and David House at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram used their columns to talk about how difficult it is to boil down journalism into short, pithy, attention-grabbing headlines. Here’s Howell’s take:

As a former copy editor, I know it's tough work, especially on a tight deadline and in a tight count. As Vince Rinehart, Editorial copy desk chief, said: "Perhaps the greatest challenge in copy editing is reading 1,000 sophisticated words on a complex topic and finding six words to tell the story and convey its nuance and tone, often with less than five minutes to do so."

And House describes it this way:

Headline content often relies on connect-the-dots skills in which editors and readers assume shared knowledge and anticipate exchanges of information. As Lutz noted, "Often a headline writer is asked to convey one or more themes in a story in 3, 4, or 5 words."

That can be a mind-bending task, particularly when a copy editor is bearing in mind the Star-Telegram's mission ("Earning the people's trust daily") while dealing with supersensitive topics such as illegal immigration -- a complex, emotionally charged issue that permeates our nation's mind and pulls high readership, increasing the need for accuracy.

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It’s a YouTube world and we’re just living in it. This much is clear, as the Web site seems to find a new way to generate media buzz every day. Take a look at these recent samplings…

Andy Warhol Online:

We’ve had Obama Girl. We’ve had Britney-loving weeper Chris Crocker. (That's 'him' above.) Now we’ve got a woman singing with her hands? According to the Canadian Globe and Mail, an odd-even-given-the-company-it-keeps video showing a pair of hands ‘singing’/grooving to a Daft Punk song is the flavor of the week.

Ad Nauseam:

Google’s ad network and YouTube are teaming up to spread advertising around the web. According to the New York Times:

The Internet search giant is expected to introduce a service on Tuesday to allow Web sites in its ad network to embed relevant videos from some YouTube content creators. A Web site or blog specializing in hiking, for instance, might choose to embed hiking videos from YouTube.

Just another example that wherever you are online, commerce is going to find you … somewhere, somehow.

Off The Radar, On Computer Screens:

You can’t find Al Jazeera English on most American cable providers, but you now can find them online via YouTube. TechCrunch reports that Al Jazeera has signed a deal where they share advertising revenue with the website.

What’s more meta than a blog about blogs and funner than a barrel of monkeys? An ombudsman column roundup of other ombudsmen’s columns, of course!

Today, Public Eye continues its semi-regular look at the issues at play in Print MediaLand -- at least the ones that seem worth passing along. (As sometimes these things get too insider-y even for us.) So keep your hands inside the car at all times, and we’re off:

The War of the Words

Words carry political weight. “Pro-choice” or “pro-life.” “Gun rights.” “Illegal immigrants.” “Surge.” And the Kansas City Star had to explain why it uses words like “militant” and “vigilante” to describe the Minutemen who watch America’s border.

I can see these readers’ point. But “militant” can also mean “aggressively active” or “strident,” and I think many people would find much of the language at their Web site fits those descriptors. One article refers to the U.S. Senate as “traitorous,” which is “putting a gun to the head of America’s national security and repeatedly pulling the trigger.”…

Then what about “vigilante?” Again to the dictionary, which says a vigilante is a group or individual volunteering to promote an interest, or to suppress and punish crime. That seems to me the exact definition of what the Minutemen claim as their purpose.

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So …it’s the Tuesday after Labor Day, and we scrammed early last week.

Did we miss anything?

I mean, aside from Bush's surprise visit to Iraq and Katie’s Baghdad trip (more on that later) and the no-hitter and Senator Craig’s post-dated resignation – well, you may have seen us discuss it on “Reliable Sources” this past weekend – and Appalachian State and Hurricane Felix and that new book on President Bush, not to mention Jerry Lewis going all Andrew “Dice” Clay on his telethon.

Yeah, we mean aside from those things.

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Bahgdad Diarist Legit: As reported in this space last week, a rapid-fire media controversy was brewing in blogistan over The New Republic’s “Baghdad Diarist.” A lot of people disputed the claims of the writer, which included playing with a skull and the mockery of a disfigured woman by soldiers. Well, the New Republic went into immediate damage control mode and investigated the complaints, with the Washington Post reporting their final verdict:

The New Republic said yesterday that it has corroborated each of the allegations in an essay written by an American soldier in Iraq by checking with other members of the man's unit.

With the exception of one "significant discrepancy," for which the magazine expressed regret, the New Republic is standing behind the account of Scott Thomas Beauchamp, an Army private whose reports of petty cruelty were aggressively challenged by conservative bloggers.

Reporting from the other side of the planet in a war zone is difficult enough. Trying to do so anonymously leaves a publication vulnerable to such charges.

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Beat The Press: According to The Politico’s Ben Smith, John Edwards is the “first major Democratic candidate for president” to take a page from the Republican playbook and make attacking the press corps a part of his campaign strategy. He’s aggressively responded to stories about his expensive haircuts, for example, releasing a video flashing images of misery in Iraq and New Orleans while the theme song of the musical "Hair" plays. And at the end, this question: "What really matters?" (He has also used the issue in fundraising emails.) Perhaps if Internet video and the “Tank Girl” soundtrack had been around in 1988, Michael Dukakis could have put together a nifty response of his own.

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By now you’ve likely heard of the story about two separate NASA reports released yesterday, one indicating potentially troubling alcohol consumption and the other raising the possibility of some sabotage among the ranks. As I read late yesterday:

America's space agency was shaken Thursday by two startling and unrelated reports: One involved claims that astronauts were drunk before flying. The other was news from NASA itself that a worker had sabotaged a computer set for delivery to the international space station.

Aviation Week & Space Technology reported on its Web site that a special panel studying astronaut health found that on two occasions, astronauts were allowed to fly after flight surgeons and other astronauts warned they were so drunk they posed a safety risk.

Between these stories and the Lisa Nowak frenzy earlier this year – you remember the diapers and a love triangle, of course – it’s been a rough 2007 for the space agency. Then this morning, like clockwork, I started hearing the cable news patter start with the clever turns of phrase, reminiscent of their treatment of “Astro-nut” Nowak. CNN opened a segment with the caption “Drunk Before Launchtime” and another newsreader introduced the story with “Houston, We Have A Drinking Problem…”

The combination of the dog days of summer and some curious astronaut behavior leads to some cheeky headlines throughout the media, and this one was too good for most editors to pass up. So I blasted into cyberspace – sober as a judge, I assure you – and found the 10 goofiest headlines for the drunk astronaut story.

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Our Crush On Obama Girl Fades: There's a new "Obama Girl" video out, and while some are giving it high marks, Public Eye has had just about enough of songs about candidates sung by scantily-clad ingénues. Well, at least until our "Gravelicious" video, starring Matthew Felling and a giant rock, comes out.

Junket Science: Patton Oswalt, star of "Ratatouille," reflected on media junkets in the Onion. "Now, when I see Will Smith or Tom Hanks give kind of a gobsmacked, deer-in-headlights interview, and I'm like, 'What the f---'s wrong with those guys?' Now I know what's wrong with them. This is how they break people in Guantanamo: They ask them variations on the exact same question. 'What time did you go to the store?' 'At 12:15.' 'So what time of day was it?' 'At 12:15.' 'So, was it 12:14?' They're just breaking me down." (via mb)

Pass The Gupta: Jon Friedman says CNN has been milking its battle with Michael Moore for every last rating point it can. And he complains that Wolf Blitzer asked Moore for "a couple of headlines," showing "that he needed Moore to say something controversial, so CNN could use it on a promo." Well, yeah. But it's July, and there's not much news. And the Wolfman is not normally a scandal-monger; we're thinking he meant "bullet point" or "basic thought." But either way, better an over-hyped debate over health care than, say, a giant squid story, no?

The Worldwide Leader … Locked Out

In news that will overjoy America’s throngs of Jeanne Zelasko fans – what, it’s just me? -- tonight’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game will be free of those pesky ESPN sportscasters. Apparently, ESPN did not adhere to the embargo rules and divulged the all-star game fan voting results a couple minutes too soon – incurring the wrath of Fox Sports. According to the Hollywood Reporter:

Major League Baseball has limited ESPN's access to Tuesday night's All-Star Game after the network broke an embargo and broadcast news of the players' selections a few minutes after an exclusive, rain-delayed telecast on TBS.

Baseball executives told ESPN that it must pare its broadcast efforts from AT&T Park in San Francisco, where the All-Star Game is being held. So, most coverage will be done out of ESPN's headquarters in Bristol, Conn., rather than having "Baseball Tonight" and a portion of "SportsCenter" originate from California as planned.

Bad news for sports fans, yes. But at least it gives America’s sports talk radio hosts a topic to discuss on the dullest sports day of the year – well, that and Dan Patrick.

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What’s more meta than a blog about blogs and funner than a barrel of monkeys? An ombudsman column roundup of other ombudsmen’s columns, of course!

Today, Public Eye continues its semi-regular look at the issues at play in Print MediaLand -- at least the ones that seem worth passing along. (As sometimes these things get too insider-y even for us.) So keep your hands inside the car at all times, and we’re off:

Al Qaeda Everywhere

We start this week at the New York Times, where Clark Hoyt takes on an enormous topic that could inspire its own multi-part investigative expose: the White House’s conflation of Al Qaeda in Iraq with the Al Qaeda that was involved with 9/11:

Bush and the military are emphasizing Al Qaeda to the virtual exclusion of other sources of violence in Iraq is an important story. So is the question of how well their version of events squares with the facts of a murky and rapidly changing situation on the ground.

But these are stories you haven’t been reading in The Times in recent weeks as the newspaper has slipped into a routine of quoting the president and the military uncritically about Al Qaeda’s role in Iraq — and sometimes citing the group itself without attribution.

And in using the language of the administration, the newspaper has also failed at times to distinguish between Al Qaeda, the group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an Iraqi group that didn’t even exist until after the American invasion.

Then, to hammer the point home, Hoyt cites a recent commencement speech by President Bush:

“Remember, when I mention Al Qaeda, they’re the ones who attacked the United States of America and killed nearly 3,000 people on September the 11th, 2001,” Bush said in the Naval War College speech.

Actually, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which came into being in 2003, pledged its loyalty to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda the next year but is not believed to be under his operational control.

Kudos to Hoyt. Sometimes, rhetorical shorthand is an effective way to communicate; other times, it simplifies things so much as to make them more cloudy.

(Double kudos to NPR’s “On the Media” for getting to this story first, on last weekend’s broadcast.)

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