(The End of) Journalism Thread

mister d · Post by **mister d** » Wed Sep 16, 2015 8:34 pm

I don't like Lupica/Bondy/Madden or read the NYDN anymore but it still feels weird or wrong that they'll be out. They're supposed to be there for me to dislike or ignore.

rass · Post by **rass** » Mon Oct 05, 2015 7:36 am

h/t

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Mon Oct 05, 2015 7:43 am

rass wrote:

h/t

Reading the Times yesterday, I was outraged by their front page story which quoted a General as saying that the military "had been targeting individuals 'who were threatening the force' and that 'there may have been collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.'"

That was the first quote in the article. And while the article did leave little doubt as to who blew up the hospital, it really softsoaps the lede.

howard · Post by **howard** » Mon Oct 05, 2015 10:02 am

eta: I found this amusing, on the same topic of media as an arm of state propaganda.

A Useful Prep-Sheet On Syria For Media Propagandists

(Originally from Counterpunch, here, but the zerohedge repost has some video attached. Written by a history prof at Tufts.)

Jerloma · Post by **Jerloma** » Mon Oct 05, 2015 10:16 am

rass wrote:

h/t

Wow. What a coincidence!

howard · Post by **howard** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 12:33 pm

This is a work of satire.

Jerloma · Post by **Jerloma** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 3:17 pm

The NFL has blamed an error by a clock operator, and the failure to correct it by on-field officials, for an unusual run-off of 18 seconds near the end of the Pittsburgh Steelers' 24-20 victory Monday night over the San Diego Chargers.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/13879 ... rgers-game" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 4:10 pm

howard wrote:This is a work of satire.

Tell that to the half dozen Facebook friends of mine who posted it with tongue not in cheek.

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 6:59 am

Ryan wrote:Or Lamar Odom

Found unconscious in a brothel. Good times.

rass · Post by **rass** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 7:48 am

I hate to threadjack, and I hope he's OK, but that article was great:

Odom was stabilized and taken to Desert View Hospital in nearby Pahrump, the statement said. Officials then tried to have him airlifted to Las Vegas, but the 6-foot-10 Odom was too tall for the helicopter that was available, so he was driven by ambulance to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.

"It's incredibly sad,'' said Hof, who turns 69 on Wednesday. Hof is known for his own onetime reality show, "Cathouse,'' on HBO.

Nice...

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Fri Oct 16, 2015 5:38 am

CNN does it again:

Also, the name of one of the prostitutes who found Odom is "Cherry Ryder."

Post by **brian** » Fri Oct 16, 2015 4:45 pm

Lamar Odom's aunt has a spokeswoman!

What a world. (BTW, I have a friend who works at the hospital he's at and it's a circus and a half. Fucking media.)

rass · Post by **rass** » Thu Nov 05, 2015 11:24 am

P.D.X. wrote:Rupert Murdoch now owns a controlling stake of National Geographic.

Let the mass firings begin.

I wonder if my parents still have a subscription? Need to check the back of the toilet when I'm down there at Thanksgiving.

wlu_lax6 · Post by **wlu_lax6** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 7:50 am

I don't remember how I started reading this blog, but when you consider the success of his brothers, this is just tough.
http://jeffbradleyblog.blogspot.com/201 ... -work.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A_B · Post by **A_B** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 8:06 am

wlu_lax6 wrote:I don't remember how I started reading this blog, but when you consider the success of his brothers, this is just tough.
http://jeffbradleyblog.blogspot.com/201 ... -work.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So...who are his brothers?

rass · Post by **rass** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 8:09 am

A_B wrote:
wlu_lax6 wrote:I don't remember how I started reading this blog, but when you consider the success of his brothers, this is just tough.
http://jeffbradleyblog.blogspot.com/201 ... -work.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
So...who are his brothers?

I read the blog post but missed that comment in wlu_lax's post.

here

Johnny Carwash · Post by **Johnny Carwash** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 4:32 pm

Not really an egregious violation of journalistic principles, but the NY Times has invited us to learn more about its top commenters, aka The 12 Worst People to Be Stranded on a Desert Island With.

DaveInSeattle · Post by **DaveInSeattle** » Mon Nov 30, 2015 7:29 pm

Remember when The National Review was considered the leading light of Conservative thought?

Oh...and in case you make it that far, and are wondering who the Pete Campbell looking young guy joining the chorus line at the end is...its current NR editor Rich Lowry, the man responsible for writing this about Sarah Palin:

I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America.

howard · Post by **howard** » Mon Nov 30, 2015 7:59 pm

That should be on Lowry's tombstone.

Post by **Shirley** » Mon Nov 30, 2015 9:14 pm

I thought they liked states' rights?

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Tue Dec 01, 2015 7:11 am

I made it to the 15 second mark.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn;t Buckley have made the current crop of Conservative thinkers enter through the servant's entrance?

DaveInSeattle · Post by **DaveInSeattle** » Tue Dec 01, 2015 11:53 am

Pruitt wrote:I made it to the 15 second mark.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn;t Buckley have made the current crop of Conservative thinkers enter through the servant's entrance?

Yes...Buckley would tell Lowry and Jonah Goldberg to get the hell out...

Pruitt · Post by **Pruitt** » Mon Dec 07, 2015 5:10 am

Succinct take down of those who reported the unfounded Urban Meyer to the Browns rumor.

Nice Work PTI

Post by **brian** » Wed Dec 16, 2015 4:08 pm

Not sure if any of you have been following it, but for a week it's been a mystery who bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal only 9 months after it was sold to a group called Gatehouse.

The winner is...Sheldon Adelson.

Though there's still a lot of unanswered questions like:

1) Why did he pay a premium of about $50 million to buy it.
2) Presumably he purchased it to exert political influence especially since Nevada might be the swingiest swing state in the 2016 election (both for president and with a wide-open Senate seat), but the R-J was already one of the most conservative, libertarian large newspapers in the U.S. Not sure why he felt the need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to essentially preach to the choir politically.

howard · Post by **howard** » Wed Dec 16, 2015 4:14 pm

For some reason, links to that story on fortune are kinda fucked. Yours and two others I got from twitter failed. Try this one, it worked just now:

http://fortune.com/2015/12/16/sheldon-a ... w-tribune/

Post by **brian** » Wed Dec 16, 2015 4:28 pm

Gracias. It was actually down for awhile. Another mystery.

Also LOL..."liberal media".

Post by **brian** » Fri Dec 18, 2015 5:32 pm

This is shady as shit.

travzilla · Post by **travzilla** » Fri Dec 18, 2015 6:10 pm

brian wrote:This is shady as shit.

That's bonkers. So those three people on the by-line (and their editor) have to assume their life is going to become very difficult in the near future, I would think.

DaveInSeattle · Post by **DaveInSeattle** » Fri Dec 18, 2015 6:34 pm

NYTimes: About the San Bernardino Killers on Social Media...Oops! Our bad!

Here’s the background: A Times article Sunday reported that the U.S. government had missed something that was right out there in the open: the jihadist social-media posts by one of the San Bernardino killers. Its initial paragraphs read as follows:

Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., passed three background checks by American immigration officials as she moved to the United States from Pakistan. None uncovered what Ms. Malik had made little effort to hide — that she talked openly on social media about her views on violent jihad.

She said she supported it. And she said she wanted to be a part of it.

It was certainly damning – and it was wrong. On Wednesday, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, referred to such reporting as “a garble.” And, as it turns out from his statements and from further reporting, Ms. Malik had not posted “openly” on social media. She had written emails; she had written private messages, not visible to the public; and she had written on a dating site.

In other words, the story’s clear implication that those who vetted Ms. Malik’s visa had missed the boat – a clearly visible ocean liner – was based on a false premise.

What makes it even more interesting? Two of the writers of that piece also wrote the story about Hillary Clinton being a target of a Justice Department Investigation because of her email practices. That story was equally wrong.

howard · Post by **howard** » Fri Dec 18, 2015 6:50 pm

The NYT for a while now has routinely reported 'facts' based upon unnamed official sources say so, without doing any further reporting to confirm the word of those unnamed official sources. Once upon a time this was a firing offense in journalism. Being a stenographer for official sources today = journalism.

The day this story broke was the day after SecState Kerry met with Putin, and announced that it was not now US policy to enact regime change in Syria. A major policy reversal. I happened to see the NYT that morning; the front page had a long article about Putin's strategy in Syria - no mention of Kerry's announcement, there or elsewhere on the front page.

The website story did mention this, and quoted Kerry - in the 15th paragraph, of a 18 paragraph story.

This newspaper is a complete waste of time, nothing more or less than an organ of propaganda.

ETA: ok, let me walk that back. I'm watching Jeopardy!, and the have a 'NYTimes Crossword' category. So, if you like crosswords, it has some utility.

DaveInSeattle · Post by **DaveInSeattle** » Fri Dec 18, 2015 7:02 pm

howard wrote:The NYT for a while now has routinely reported 'facts' based upon unnamed official sources say so, without doing any further reporting to confirm the word of those unnamed official sources. Once upon a time this was a firing offense in journalism. Being a stenographer for official sources today = journalism.

The best was when in 2002 the Bush White House leaded information to Judith Miller about the "aluminum tubes" headed to Iraq, which she then promptly wrote up in a front page story. Then those same White House officials (Condi Rice and Dick Cheney specifically) then went on the Sunday news shows saying "Look, even the New York Times is reporting this information!

Post by **Sabo** » Thu Dec 24, 2015 9:14 am

brian wrote:This is shady as shit.

The LA Times shines some light on the LVRJ's acquisition by Adelson.

Post by **brian** » Tue Dec 29, 2015 12:25 pm

A fellow CMU alum has a much-loved year-end recap of PR boners. Worth a read.

sancarlos · Post by **sancarlos** » Mon Jan 11, 2016 11:42 pm

rass wrote:
P.D.X. wrote:Rupert Murdoch now owns a controlling stake of National Geographic.
Let the mass firings begin.
I wonder if my parents still have a subscription? Need to check the back of the toilet when I'm down there at Thanksgiving.

59 year-old Jerry Hall (former longtime girlfriend of Mick Jagger) is engaged to marry 84 year-old troll Rupert Murdoch. I'm sure it's true love.

Joe K · Post by **Joe K** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 1:12 pm

It sounds like Buzzfeed may have stepped in it a bit with their story on match fixing in tennis. If you haven't followed it, they published a big expose identifying purportedly suspicious betting patterns for certain unnamed players' matches and argued htat the most plausible explanation was match fixing. The sexy headline was that one of the players was a currently active Grand Slam winner. People were able to figure out pretty quickly, based on the data set, that the player in question was Lleyton Hewitt.

But it turns out that for the majority of the supposedly "fixed" Hewitt losses, there are easily identifiable, innocuous explanations for the betting patterns. For example, for a number of the matches Buzzfeed looked at, the book they used was a clear outlier in terms of the line it set, which is why a bunch of money went on Hewitt's opponent. In other cases, Hewitt was coming off an injury, which likely explains why the lines were funky. And, most egregiously, in at least one of the matches Buzzfeed identified, the line shifted hugely because the match was suspended while Hewitt was already down 5-7, 4-4. Buzzfeed's analysis treated that as if the line had shifted overwhelmingly in favor of the underdog before the match, as opposed to shifting mid-match.

P.D.X. · Post by **P.D.X.** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 1:42 pm

Was there "story" completely comprised of lolzy internet memes?

howard · Post by **howard** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 1:48 pm

P.D.X. wrote:Was there "story" completely comprised of lolzy internet memes?

Maybe they should stick to that, their core competency.

Post by **Shirley** » Sat Jan 23, 2016 3:21 pm

Joe K wrote:It sounds like Buzzfeed may have stepped in it a bit with their story on match fixing in tennis. If you haven't followed it, they published a big expose identifying purportedly suspicious betting patterns for certain unnamed players' matches and argued htat the most plausible explanation was match fixing. The sexy headline was that one of the players was a currently active Grand Slam winner. People were able to figure out pretty quickly, based on the data set, that the player in question was Lleyton Hewitt.

But it turns out that for the majority of the supposedly "fixed" Hewitt losses, there are easily identifiable, innocuous explanations for the betting patterns. For example, for a number of the matches Buzzfeed looked at, the book they used was a clear outlier in terms of the line it set, which is why a bunch of money went on Hewitt's opponent. In other cases, Hewitt was coming off an injury, which likely explains why the lines were funky. And, most egregiously, in at least one of the matches Buzzfeed identified, the line shifted hugely because the match was suspended while Hewitt was already down 5-7, 4-4. Buzzfeed's analysis treated that as if the line had shifted overwhelmingly in favor of the underdog before the match, as opposed to shifting mid-match.

Wow, I hadn't seen those details. I'll admit I was surprised and impressed that Buzzfeed, of all sites, had come up with the expose. Maybe they really are as lame as most people think they are. I mean, you just can't fuck up a story like that.

Brontoburglar · Post by **Brontoburglar** » Sun Jan 24, 2016 3:27 pm

they partnered with the BBC on it

The Sybian · Post by **The Sybian** » Mon Feb 29, 2016 12:54 pm

Leaked off-air hot mic audio of Trump talking to Joe Scarborough and Mika. Jesus Christ, are they besties? "Nothing hard, Mika." Holy fuck, not that I am surprised. Then there was Palin getting pissy on air with Matt Lauer because he dare asked a question about a topic she didn't want to discuss. These socalled news shows are nothing but free ad time for candidates.

At least George Stephanopoulos pushed Christie on his move to endorse Trump. This was great, I wish any reporter or pundit would push politicians accountable for their hypocrisy, or at least make them answer questions rather than letting them off the hook without any pushback. The problem is, if one show host did this, they probably wouldn't get any other guests on their show.