Two Gladiators

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Where Have You Been Lately?

From the best thing on the internet, as someone recently said.

The Political Power of Data Visualization

Poor Circulation

h/t Josh K.

What Journalism Should Be?

The Ethic of the Link

h/t Brad DeLong

"The Sickness of American Journalism in a Nutshell"

Greenwald on Froomkin: The take-away:

To be a real establishment journalist (objective), you're not allowed to say when one side is lying -- even when they are. All you're allowed to do is repeat what both sides say and leave it at that (Colbert: "The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home"). Froomkin -- unlike David Gregory -- believes that reporters should actually point out when the Government is lying. That's what he did. That's why, to The Post, he wasn't a real reporter but, rather, an "ideologue." That's the sickness of American journalism in a nutshell.

Then there's Froomkin's freakish, exotic belief that journalists should be adversarial to and skpetical of the claims of government officials, especially when it comes to matters of war and national security. See his superb guidelines for press skepticism of government claims ("You Can’t Be Too Skeptical of Authority"); his criticisms of the establishment media for uncritically reporting Bush claims about the Iranian threat; his blistering critique of the failures of the media in the run-up to the Iraq War; and his criticism of Tim Russert's protection of political power. Skepticism towards -- rather than mindless repeating of -- the claims of the political establishment is almost as severe a sin in modern journalism as pointing out when government officials are lying.

And then, most ironically (given John Harris' accusations that he's not objective), is Froomkin's insistence on treating all politicians the same -- subjecting all political leaders to adversarial journalistic scrutiny rather than declaring himself on one side or the other and spouting standard partisan talking points. He couldn't be pigeonholed as reflexively pro-Bush or pro-Obama -- i.e., he has intellectual and journalistic integrity -- and therefore confused the mind-numbing little formula used to simplify and deaden our political debates.

Read the whole thing.

Thin Opinion

Via Kevin Drum:

This is a fascinating example of just how thin opinion polling like this is. The real lesson here is that most people haven't given this issue even a few seconds thought, and their response to the poll question is practically meaningless. Faced with even the slightest pushback, large majorities of both supporters and opponents flipped their views almost instantly.

Send Specialists, Not Generalists

Dan Froomkin:

President Obama holds a prime-time press conference tomorrow night to mark his 100th day in office, and if the major news organizations really want to make it interesting, they won’t send their White House corrrespondents.

No, I’m not suggesting a boycott. What I’m proposing is that, depending on what they want to probe, news organizations should send the beat reporters — or even columnists — who have the deepest knowledge and expertise in the subject at hand.

This would not only result in more probing questions, but more thoughtful and challenging follow-ups. What I want to see are tough, detailed exchanges driven by people who really know what they’re talking about and aren’t too intimidated to push back and drill down when necessary.

So if the New York Times or The Washington Post decide that their top priority tomorrow night is to probe Obama about his highly speculative bank bailout proposals, they should send someone who could really mix it up with the president — like Paul Krugman, or Steven Pearlstein.

If they decide the most important thing is to pin Obama down on his views on accountability for torture, they should send Scott Shane, or Joby Warrick.

If the goal is getting Obama to explain his thinking on complicated policy matters, to push him beyond the things he’s said before, to call him out when he’s being vague, or he’s exaggerating, or he’s just dead wrong — then it’s time to call in the experts.

White House correspondents, by contrast, are generalists — and most of them are former political reporters. They tend to focus on how politically effective the president is being rather than whether he is intellectually consistent, whether his positions are realistic, and whether his explanations are sufficient. They are also beholden to the press office for the continued access they need to do their jobs. . . .

Read the rest.

Nate on Race at TED

The Media and Torture

Go. Read.

Greenwald and Goodman

At the Izzy Awards.

More from PEW

The internet and the 2008 (Presidential) campaign.

"The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers"

From Nichols & McChesney. Article here. Interview here. Both are worth the time.

State of the News Media

The 2009 Report, from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Stewart Smackdown

Jon Stewart takes on business reporting below (for unedited versions of the full interview, go here).

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UPDATE: From Jay Ackroyd: "So we're at the point that a comedian has to take a break from fart sounds and funny faces to dish out some journalism. Because otherwise, there isn't any? Journalism, that is."

UPDATE II: From Glenn Greenwald:

That's the heart of the (completely justifiable) attack on Cramer and CNBC by Stewart. They would continuously put scheming CEOs on their shows, conduct completely uncritical "interviews" and allow them to spout wholesale falsehoods. And now that they're being called upon to explain why they did this, their excuse is: Well, we were lied to. What could we have done? And the obvious answer, which Stewart repeatedly expressed, is that people who claim to be "reporters" are obligated not only to provide a forum for powerful people to make claims, but also to then investigate those claims and then to inform the public if the claims are true. That's about as basic as it gets.

Today, everyone -- including media stars everywhere -- is going to take Stewart's side and all join in the easy mockery of Cramer and CNBC, as though what Stewart is saying is so self-evidently true and what Cramer/CNBC did is so self-evidently wrong. But there's absolutely nothing about Cramer that is unique when it comes to our press corps. The behavior that Jon Stewart so expertly dissected last night is exactly what our press corps in general does -- and, when compelled to do so, they say so and are proud of it.

Read the Rest HERE.

The Politics of Seating Charts

Go see Nate, for what's going on here:

Media, Recession and Poverty

From FAIR and Neil deMause, with special guest appearance. . . . .

Reformation versus Transformation?

Of late, we've seen a resurgence on the political left of the term "progressive."  This I've found problematic, in no small part because even during the so-called Progressive Era, there was no single progressivism, but many (often contradictory) progressivisms.  Nate Silver suggests we distinguish between two strains of modern progressivism -- the rational and the radical.  In some ways, he's really reaching back to an older distinction between urban progressivism and rural populism, but there's more at work here.  I find a lot to argue with in his formulation, but you should click through and read his post.  His summary chart below.

Problems with Polling, Part 427

From Pollster.com:

Much of what pollsters offer to the world as "public opinion" is in reality hypothetical, based on giving respondents information that many in the general public may not have and then immediately asking respondents for their reaction to that information.

Such results can be illuminating, but pollsters recognize that feeding respondents information means the sample no longer represents the American public and what Mark calls its "pre-existing" opinion. Unfortunately, many pollsters fail to acknowledge the hypothetical nature of such results, and instead treat them as though they represent the current state of the public's views.

The problem with this kind of approach is illustrated in the case that Mark discussed in his post, dealing with the "card check" bill, the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) concerning the authorization of unions in the workplace.

The vast majority of Americans, one can reasonably assume, have little to no knowledge of the provisions of the bill. Thus, to measure "public opinion" on the issue, pollsters feel they need to tell respondents what the bill is all about. A Republican pollster explained the bill one way, a Democratic pollster another way, and - to no one's surprise - they ended up with a "public opinion" that reflected their respective party's position on the issue.

While one may argue the relative merits of the questions used by the two pollsters, the main point is that informing the public of any major policy proposal is intrinsically biased. Pollsters have to decide what is important among all the various elements of the proposal, and they can often come up with quite different conclusions. This problem applies to public policy pollsters as well, who - we can reasonably assume - have no partisan agenda, but who nevertheless can produce what appear to be partisan results.

Such problems have multiplied with the recent public policy polling on the bailout proposals for Wall Street and for the auto industry, and on the stimulus plan being considered by Congress. Most pollsters assume the public has little specific knowledge of such proposals, and thus pollsters provide respondents specific information to measure the public's (hypothetical) reaction to the proposal.

When CNN described the proposal to bailout the auto industry by characterizing it as "loans in order to prevent them from going into bankruptcy," in exchange for which the companies would produce plans "that show how they would become viable businesses in the long run," it found a 26-point margin in favor (63 percent to 37 percent). But when an ABC/Washington Post poll only a few days earlier had mentioned the word "bailout" in its question and did not refer to plans leading to the companies becoming viable, the poll showed a 13-point majority against the proposal (55 percent to 42 percent).

Again, one can debate the relative merits of the two questions, but the tendency of pollsters is to say that each set of results provides different insights into the dynamics of the public's views on this matter. In short, each provides a picture of potential public reaction to the proposal, if the proposal is framed to the general public in the way each polling organization presented the issue to its respondents.

That distinction is generally lost in the news reports. . . .