tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-106427852024-03-12T23:57:54.665-04:00headsup: the blogThorts and comments about editing and the deskly artsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3272125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-82501897140318301682023-10-13T23:19:00.004-04:002023-10-14T17:47:12.123-04:00Today in random fearmongering<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirS1-7URvqJYcypKO-iS70azZWD6QTc_obYjSMlQam9rI5vv3VqV3PYNjFuRucGAPBEQRb4f0ppBqZO6-lOpOUvotDSSSnJlmH7DYcXBTdSPghHvVDT_ndx2L9gqigyHD2j1FVO4jL6YWRL26nDJ0cTooigQKAUc8jbsQgdviW1vX7jPo715jM/s404/freep.chile.2023.1011.PNG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="366" data-original-width="404" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirS1-7URvqJYcypKO-iS70azZWD6QTc_obYjSMlQam9rI5vv3VqV3PYNjFuRucGAPBEQRb4f0ppBqZO6-lOpOUvotDSSSnJlmH7DYcXBTdSPghHvVDT_ndx2L9gqigyHD2j1FVO4jL6YWRL26nDJ0cTooigQKAUc8jbsQgdviW1vX7jPo715jM/w200-h181/freep.chile.2023.1011.PNG" width="200" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: georgia;">Dear <a href="https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2023/10/10/oakland-county-jewelry-heist-arrests-chile/71096033007/" target="_blank">local fishwrap</a>:</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you want me to take the bait in your lede seriously:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Four men from Chile were charged last week in connection with robberies and assaults at two jewelry stores in Oakland County, according to police in Auburn Hills and Troy.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Try not to knock it down in the second graf:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The charges, involving retail stores, don't match the scenario of "transnational gangs" targeting upscale houses, as described in a recent warning by Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But ... but ... there's still a trend here, right?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>On Thursday, Oct. 5, President Joe Biden said he was suspending federal regulations to allow adding about 20 more miles to the controversial border wall begun by the Trump administration, although Biden said he was required by law to approve the construction and did so reluctantly. On Oct. 1, the governor of New York, a Democrat, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” she strongly favored a tighter border.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>“It is too open right now,’’ Gov. Kathy Hochul said of the U.S. border with Mexico, where an estimated 200,000 to 260,000 migrants entered the U.S. in September alone, according to national reports.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>On Sept. 29, Bouchard issued a warning about migrants that made national news in conservative media. Bouchard warned of “transnational gangs” of migrants, which he said were breaking into upscale houses that back up to golf courses and wooded areas in Oakland County and elsewhere, although he said he couldn’t reveal whether any such suspects had been arrested in metro Detroit. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">True enough, in its own way. "C<a href="https://nypost.com/2023/10/02/gangs-from-central-and-south-america-targeting-luxury-homes-sheriff/" target="_blank">onservative media</a>" (citing a Detroit TV station) even quoted the sheriff as saying a similar gang (similar to what, neither he nor the tabloid Post indicated) had struck in New York. “'They typically hit homes from 5 to 9 p.m., they seem to want houses
where nobody’s home, and they usually come in through windows in the
back,' the sheriff added."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But that doesn't deter (sorry) the local paper:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><u>The four Chilean men arraigned last week in Oakland County have been charged with crimes that don’t fit Bouchard’s scenario</u> <u>but their arrests still add to unease about migrants</u>. The four were charged with armed robbery, felonious assault, and malicious destruction at two jewelry retailers. The charges came after two smash-and-grab strikes, one at the MJ Diamonds store inside Great Lakes Crossing Outlets in Auburn Hills at 4:30 p.m. on Aug. 11, a second at the jewelry department inside Macy’s at Oakland Mall in Troy at 5:42 p.m. on Aug. 24, according to Auburn Hills police. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">True and -- OK, let's be charitable and say "crudely speculative in the manner of 'conservative media,'" respectively. In other words, they're unlikely to "add to unease about migrants" unless you tell people to add it to their unease. And if you're wondering why a robbery in August is related to a Biden statement nearly eight weeks later, hold that thought:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>... Officers who investigated the robbery at Great Lakes Crossing Outlets
decided the likely getaway vehicle was a black Kia Soul. Its ownership
was traced to Aguilar-Mondaca.* Those officers notified the FBI/Oakland
County Gang and Violent Crime Task Force, whose members include
investigators from Auburn Hills and Troy police. They began conducting surveillance at Oakland Mall. Surveillance on Aug.
24 showed three subjects, all wearing masks, arriving in a black Kia
Soul to enter Macy’s.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So someone owning reasonably spiffy SUV had it registered somewhere in or near</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">the second-wealthiest county (by median income) in Michigan,</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> and the cops set up surveillance at another mall, and ... tell me how this is related to the conservative-media-stoked "unease"?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>In the days before the Oakland County sheriff issued his warning about gangs of migrant thieves, a nationwide coalition of sheriff departments — the American Sheriff Alliance — met in San Diego to issue a “call for action at the border due to the heightened threat picture,” the group said in a news release. The release said that the swelling torrent of migrants had brought a 906% increase in “individuals found to be on the Terrorist Watch List” since 2017, “and there are still three months left in 2023” to increase that number. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you're forming an impression that these characters -- and we can go ahead and repeat that they're charged in two violent armed robberies -- appear to have little to do with either the "swelling torrent" or the Terrorist Watch List, that seems fair. It's very much the impression given by the story, and it seems rather a shame that someone didn't notice that mismatch before hitting the "publish" button on this bit of random fearmongering.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">* One of the suspects, but you've probably figured that out.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-82110719258250492212023-09-23T13:27:00.001-04:002023-09-23T13:27:58.811-04:00His fingertips around the cosmos curled<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvXuNpmPWVUBm4YrVNdQEUj24B3RtLTuyEuFaoSZUwPY0gcytTpdBfUv5Nm7Mr8OcW_pntAUYFWo6eyItLspxYqeMSHcZBqZD6lpEpO7c8r8ph3Jjzlj-aHxyf066GUmVhcl2FQ8W1atFVUJq095vL4EpBV6nvd7skiqDWnEYXg-pdxdG1EJuM/s1203/the%20sun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="1203" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvXuNpmPWVUBm4YrVNdQEUj24B3RtLTuyEuFaoSZUwPY0gcytTpdBfUv5Nm7Mr8OcW_pntAUYFWo6eyItLspxYqeMSHcZBqZD6lpEpO7c8r8ph3Jjzlj-aHxyf066GUmVhcl2FQ8W1atFVUJq095vL4EpBV6nvd7skiqDWnEYXg-pdxdG1EJuM/s320/the%20sun.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p> <span style="font-family: georgia;">A.J. Liebling is top of mind these days, what with <a href="http://headsuptheblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/offers-and-demands.html" target="_blank">management offering</a> and <a href="http://headsuptheblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/world-turned-upside-down.html" target="_blank">the union demanding</a> just down the road, so the Murdoch papers' coverage of the great man's retirement naturally recalled "The Man who Changed the Rules," Liebling's 1951 summary of how William Randolph Hearst's death was covered. This quatrain, from the <i>Mirror</i>'s house poet, stood out:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The Chief is gone, the man we all called Boss ...<br /></i></span><i style="font-family: georgia;">Colossus of an age that changed the world.<br /></i><i style="font-family: georgia;">The galleons of his genius knew their course,<br /></i><i style="font-family: georgia;">His fingertips around the cosmos curled.</i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's echoed, these 70-plus years on, by <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/news/9149057/rupert-murdoch-most-phenomenal-news-man-of-modern-age/" target="_blank">Trevor Kavanagh, political editor at the Super Soaraway Sun</a> (his phrasing, not mine): </span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">I’ve enjoyed knowing the man we call The Boss both at leisure and under pressure as chief of the world’s greatest media empire. ... </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have seen him prove time and again that democracy and free speech only flourish under a free, vigorous and sometimes controversial press.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Two things at least distinguish Rupert Murdoch from Citizen Hearst: One, Murdoch is around to see the paeans, and two, he's actually rather successful at the business of selling news. (As Liebling noted in 1961, Hearst "not only failed to create good newspapers but failed to make money out of bad ones -- something that conspicuous medioctities have succeeded at.") But Murdoch's employees, like Hearst's, are united in praise of the Boss's unique genius and ability -- take it away, <i><a href="https://nypost.com/2023/09/21/rupert-murdoch-takes-on-new-role-as-chairman-emeritus-of-news-corp-and-fox/" target="_blank">New York Post</a></i> -- to "redefine the media landscape."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Two traits stand out in the coverage, exemplified here by the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>'s editorial: that dogged stand-up-for-the-litle-guy attitude mentioned by the Super Soaraway Sun and the insistence that staffers made up their own minds.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTRfhKtzyADqAiyhebmJh5FSXZRnMXHJcwDttOdJBsQQDk0-7oCMWkqnp4b7BxNl8JiTf1f7eK9FoQf46V8oUVqyEmKQ5ck8PyK8-9GnCZlUNXOxLgxP6KTSa7RS_Khq2bURqFK0cYmhjUeUPo6c2TfW_XX-5RwKjvwrbNgYm2Nq36CCbLlPxg/s1292/wsj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="586" data-original-width="1292" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTRfhKtzyADqAiyhebmJh5FSXZRnMXHJcwDttOdJBsQQDk0-7oCMWkqnp4b7BxNl8JiTf1f7eK9FoQf46V8oUVqyEmKQ5ck8PyK8-9GnCZlUNXOxLgxP6KTSa7RS_Khq2bURqFK0cYmhjUeUPo6c2TfW_XX-5RwKjvwrbNgYm2Nq36CCbLlPxg/w400-h181/wsj.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">That's actually a well-tested observation in media sociology, dating at least to Warren Breed's "<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2573002" target="_blank">Social control in the newsroom</a>" (1955). Breed, having worked for a Hearst paper, noted that the Chief didn't need to emerge from the box of earth from his home planet to tell you how many adjectives to deploy, or when a story should begin with "Bands playing and flags flying." If you didn't already know that by the time you signed on, a friendly senior reporter would tip you off before you covered the parade. </span><p></p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's Kavanagh quoting Murdoch's farewell note:</span><div><div><br /></div><div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Elites have open contempt for those who are not members of their rarified class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites, peddling political narratives rather than pursuing truth.”</span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></i></div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Which explains why The Sun stands alone as “the people’s paper”.</span></i></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">That seems to be the heart of the Murdoch con: convincing the Little Guy that you're standing between him and the mysterious elite, even as you're reaching into his pocket for his own good. Here's Liebling again, riffing on the cartoon image of the overburdened taxpayer as "a small, shabby man in underclothes and a barrel":</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The man in the barrel is always warned that a frivolous project like medical care for his aged parents is likely to double his already crushing tax burden. The implication is that the newspaper owner is above worrying about </i>his <i>parents, and of course he is, because his old man* left him the paper.</i></span></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">* Sir Keith Murdoch, if you're scoring along at home.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-86065778322324839212023-03-12T22:59:00.000-04:002023-03-12T22:59:14.394-04:00Biden is coming<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVazgexq7ujHudLM4A3neWdm4rPZbIYSv87c86wl1__jsfex9xwjmO5VV8hQElSbSJhujbyWtWK2OgIhUHP48aNcewSGwVMn1rD3RNK3foabccFQC0xJXt6z_nHExQxFx4INOZtuEZiws3EuDjJoBGibfQ3GiqpvtuG_kv1hRhyHA0R_FpSA/s319/biden.2023.0217.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="319" data-original-width="197" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVazgexq7ujHudLM4A3neWdm4rPZbIYSv87c86wl1__jsfex9xwjmO5VV8hQElSbSJhujbyWtWK2OgIhUHP48aNcewSGwVMn1rD3RNK3foabccFQC0xJXt6z_nHExQxFx4INOZtuEZiws3EuDjJoBGibfQ3GiqpvtuG_kv1hRhyHA0R_FpSA/s1600/biden.2023.0217.bmp" width="197" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: georgia;">So in what seems like big news around here, all my Fox data from 2022 -- 2,624 screenshots of the top five stories on the foxnews.com.homepage -- is now entered in a single spreadsheet. (Hautboys and trumpets off.) And the AEJMC deadline is still 19 days away.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What, you might ask, is the point? Well, it's not to say anything about Tucker Carlson and his guests; you don't need a spreadsheet to find the "off" button on the remote. It doesn't demonstrate that any specific, falsifiable utterance about Dominion Voting Systems' joint operating agreement with Beelzebub was made with actual malice under the Sullivan standard. Nor does it prove that Fox is a propaganda network and thus will lose its news license forthwith.* But it is a reasonable way to spend some time fleshing out the ways in which news routines, wherever they're practiced, allow all sorts of ideological skulduggery to sneak past the watchdogs. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As that suggests, this isn't a study that loses sleep over what the opinion pages do. I'm not especially panicked by opinions showing up amid the news; if you don't like frontpage editorial cartoons (or large 1A doses of W.R. Hearst's views on life, the universe and everything), you shouldn't study security framing and the run-up to Pearl Harbor. And Fox is generally scrupulous about labeling opinions when they show up among the top five stories. It's not too surprising when two opinion pieces show up in a day, but when Joe Biden is coming for your retirement <i>and </i>the old homestead in consecutive screen grabs (above right, from about 10:45 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. Eastern US, Feb. 17, 2023), something cool is afoot.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Some of Fox's practices -- <a href="http://headsuptheblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/annals-of-g-droppin.html" target="_blank">g-droppin'</a>, for example -- look like mere tabloidism. Across time, they point to some more entertaining questions: not just why "Not lovin' it" is the headline of choice for stories about miscreants at McDonald's, but why "Hidin' Biden" is a more frequent hed choice than "Cruzin' for a bruisin' " -- or why "California" in heds is followed not just by "dreamin' " but by "fleein' " and "leavin'."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Measures of sourcing and placement help address how frequently Fox's top political stories are rewritten from Politico or the frequently dericed New York Times or CNN. You can tell how often the day's lead story is based on a single tweet from Elon Musk or start to estimate whether anything Kamala Harris does is news before Fox has a chance to write a "Twitter erupts" hed about it. You can even count how many uniqure stories about the Idaho murders can lead the page in a single day.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_5f_uOHqVU7FPAbjq_EoJ9Gzh9nP43MlLV1lcumGRtXBgk-GP-5Ou5D0Llsr_4xnTxfNagsO7h6cu3iChca6C2NwwTp_EyVk0kmh1KBs8ZY1Anc0N5EEFQEMiHa0ie5UeFPDzVXGQIgCFeZ87Y04T-1JISy9yPd9oMKwn7WSnQmo1MD-7dw/s448/gardenpath.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="372" data-original-width="448" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_5f_uOHqVU7FPAbjq_EoJ9Gzh9nP43MlLV1lcumGRtXBgk-GP-5Ou5D0Llsr_4xnTxfNagsO7h6cu3iChca6C2NwwTp_EyVk0kmh1KBs8ZY1Anc0N5EEFQEMiHa0ie5UeFPDzVXGQIgCFeZ87Y04T-1JISy9yPd9oMKwn7WSnQmo1MD-7dw/w200-h166/gardenpath.png" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Then there's some sheer nerdery: figuring out the correctness conditions of slamming and blasting, for example. (Hint: You can slam and blast pretty actively if you're a Republican or a CEO, but if you're a Democrat, be prepared to submit to a lot of passive blasting.) Melting down is almost exclusively done by two groups: (a) Black athletes and entertainers and b) liberals and the media. Done properly, even <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-pardons-woman-convicted-of-murder-5-others-on-drug-alcohol-related-offenses" target="_blank">the occasional garden-path faceplant</a> can take on a partisan tone.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A 2021 take on some of this has already shown up in the <a href="https://www.routledge.com/A-Media-Framing-Approach-to-Securitization-Storytelling-in-Conflict-Crisis/Vultee/p/book/9781138603066" target="_blank">Big Securitization Book</a>, but there's plenty more to be played with.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">* Oh, stop it.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-86374618438337233832023-01-27T23:17:00.001-05:002023-03-05T21:29:20.584-05:00Antepenultimatum<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrCtBWxuFRhFFj_aIHRWr_7kuCu9utDjAeEOhgFGQbe1bnTuVLiqsejOnydzrdC9OWl9Ea97CIOGcFxXDv0S9sWjt0ebAVfYlV61A7e6U5WypL-JoPOGG0awoiWvMPXHMgSXBo4EQdk-2HY8b8-agRHGSi86d4O4whrtH4--wKYALIofF8vQ/s1414/ultimatum1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1414" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrCtBWxuFRhFFj_aIHRWr_7kuCu9utDjAeEOhgFGQbe1bnTuVLiqsejOnydzrdC9OWl9Ea97CIOGcFxXDv0S9sWjt0ebAVfYlV61A7e6U5WypL-JoPOGG0awoiWvMPXHMgSXBo4EQdk-2HY8b8-agRHGSi86d4O4whrtH4--wKYALIofF8vQ/s320/ultimatum1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm not sure I could even name a favorite A.J. Liebling column.* Last couple decades, I've been much more in the "what delicate filleting from seven decades ago does this bit of brain-dead yapping from Fox News remind me of the most?" Monday, it was "Antepenultimatum" (Sept. 27, 1946). </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Liebling's topic was a "conspicuously civilized note ... telling the Yugoslavs that if they didn't rurn loose the surviving occupants of two American planes shot down by them, the United States would complain to the Security Council." He likened this to threatening your obstreperous neighbor with a lawsuit, rather than threatening to break his neck: "An ultimatum, I had always understood, is a threat to break the neck. ... Serbia received an ultimatum from Austria in 1914."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Imagine my delight when <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230123132337/https://www.foxnews.com/world/poland-ask-germany-approval-send-tanks-ukraine" target="_blank">Fox's No. 4 story Monday morning</a>** (the above is from around 8 Eastern) proclaimed that Poland had announced plans to send the Leopard 2 main battle tank to Ukraine, despite Germany's interest in delaying: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Morawiecki said Poland had been building a coalition of countries prepared to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/category/world/conflicts/ukraine" target="_blank">send Leopar</a><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/category/world/conflicts/ukraine" target="_blank">ds to Ukraine</a> even without approval from Germany.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"We
will ask [Germany] for permission, but this is a secondary theme,"
Morawiecki said. "Even if, eventually, we do not get this permission, we
— within this small coalition — even if Germany is not in this
coalition, we will hand over our tanks, together with the others, to
Ukraine."</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Back to Liebling:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Journalists, and especially the fellows who write for the press assocations, have a habit of using the strongest word they can think of in the lead of a story, even when the word really means something else. Headline writers often base their eye-smackers on the strongest word in the lead. That's the only reason I can think of for the use of the word "ultimatum" in every New York newspaper on Thursday, August 22."</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You can see why, after a dose of ULTIMATUM GIVES TITO 48 HOURS TO FREE FLYERS, YUGOS GET ULTIMATUM and the like, Liebling "felt like we had left the diving board and would hit the surface of the third World War any second." (And if you too had had enough of UKRAINE: WORLD WAR III OR COLD WAR II? by the end of February, I expect he was nodding along.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The fun continued when <a href="the story moved into the lead" target="_blank">the story moved into the le</a></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="the story moved into the lead" target="_blank">ad</a> around 10 a.m.:</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim28-8_WGBtAUnTgFyczVOaDAwgUm4wju5h6LKEloVgORx6AF537TMOZhzaWNCPjjFPCGbxXq6CWjKzahPWheFP0zjGTOKofoiDA-5TqGmdUnNAE6z_5Qrf8TrnQqwnMXiZZIar01cbwzOsDtvQbWOMVjLIQEt2YIe6eGynSkPmJaa1ZXzNQ/s1171/ultimatum2.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="629" data-original-width="1171" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim28-8_WGBtAUnTgFyczVOaDAwgUm4wju5h6LKEloVgORx6AF537TMOZhzaWNCPjjFPCGbxXq6CWjKzahPWheFP0zjGTOKofoiDA-5TqGmdUnNAE6z_5Qrf8TrnQqwnMXiZZIar01cbwzOsDtvQbWOMVjLIQEt2YIe6eGynSkPmJaa1ZXzNQ/w400-h215/ultimatum2.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Germany will not stop Poland from delivering Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, Germany's foreign minister announced Sunday.</i></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If Germany has mastered time travel to the point where it can cave in on Sunday to the Monday ultimatum, the rest of NATO should worry a bit that it doesn't send the damn things back to, oh, <a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/battles-kharkov" target="_blank">October 1941</a> or so. But I digress.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Liebling took himself to the references, starting with "a ninety-five-cent dictionary which I bought one time in a cigar store and which gives only one meaning for each word" and ending with the 13-volume Oxford, which gave pretty much the explanation the OED has today: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>In diplomacy, the final terms presented by one power (or group of powers) to another, the rejection of which may lead to the severing of diplomatic relations, and eventually to a declaration of war.</i></span></p><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Because the OED is a fine place to play "that's been a verb longer than Missouri has been a journalism school," the next entry (barely two years younger) is worth noting:</span></div><div><br /></div><div><div><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">A final condition or stipulation; one's last word on a matter.</span></i></div></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Not everything in news is subject to the sort of know-it-when-I-see-it framing contagion that makes for crises or tragedies. Newsrooms are -- usually -- still careful to look up "hurricane" or "blizzard" before declaring one, even if they're consistently careless with "hurricane-force winds." And terrorism is often carefully licensed; it's always worth noting when an outlet like Fox calls "terror" on its own and when it waits for permission. sLiebling suspects a form of the latter: "a State Department public-relations official who, asked at a press conference 'if it is all right to call this thing an 'ultimatum,' may have answered, 'Sure, boys, go ahead.'"</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">With all that logged in, though, there's a point to Libling's prescriptivism: " I fear that I detected, in their taking the gloomiest possible view of the situation, a certain eagerness on the part of most of the newspapers" -- evidenced by what he saw as the Mirror's later regret that the pesky Yugoslavs had complied. Given the choice between Media Conspiracy and Media Stupid, my money is usually on the latter, but when Fox is out ahead of the world on the ultimatum front, I'm always inclined to give the old guy a listen.</span></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span><span style="font-family: georgia;">* Granted,it's hard to go wrong</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> with "Offers and Demands" (Jan. 26, 1963), but look at the competition</span><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">** The story at the link has been updated, though it still has the "5:49 am" time stamp.</span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-21316586230897325652023-01-11T21:18:00.002-05:002023-01-11T21:18:54.509-05:00Eyes 1, Brain 0<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoKYAbHm2FB4eQB1YzDoh_LB_3Io7e2dGIQmCB0aI7UNqlbKbQvXdfmqfrwEWz64A-M6n2Tt7qM8Z5pBchWncNTxM6i4rZ2iGTcfXpSRb4GgHoet14lmdr97J-KBwANC-bXleYSa-xLsBSP_jDby5Wt0EuMVW8VOwkeQaO9HgVKBM1mZzK7g/s1280/fox.bullshit.2023.0111.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="948" data-original-width="1280" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoKYAbHm2FB4eQB1YzDoh_LB_3Io7e2dGIQmCB0aI7UNqlbKbQvXdfmqfrwEWz64A-M6n2Tt7qM8Z5pBchWncNTxM6i4rZ2iGTcfXpSRb4GgHoet14lmdr97J-KBwANC-bXleYSa-xLsBSP_jDby5Wt0EuMVW8VOwkeQaO9HgVKBM1mZzK7g/w400-h296/fox.bullshit.2023.0111.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: georgia;">The Fair 'n' Balanced Network is telling the truth here, you bet. It even has the direct quote to prove it! Let's look at the first three paragraphs of <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/biden-challenged-mexico-president-forgetfulness-during-north-american-leaders-summit" target="_blank">Wednesday morning's No. 2 stor</a>y: </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador challenged President Biden on his <u>"forgetfulness" to help Latin American countries</u> during the North American Leaders' Summit Monday. He also encouraged him to prioritize fixing the migration crisis affecting the U.S.-Mexico border.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>While public comments mostly struck a positive tone, López Obrador pressed Biden over his "abandonment" and <u>"forgetfulness" to help Central American countries</u>.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"This is the moment for us to determine to do away with <u>this abandonment, this disdain, and this forgetfulness for Latin America and the Caribbean</u>," Lopez Obrador said during a press conference Monday.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You can forgive the standard-issue Fox viewer, accustomed to stories about the president's memory issues, for reaching the conclusion that Fox intended before reaching the one that AMLO intended. Eyes 1, Brain 0, top of the 5th.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-2801219882071195142022-12-27T22:11:00.002-05:002022-12-27T22:11:29.582-05:00'This is the reality they stole from us!'<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRKsNHk2msg1DQHa_-nU1LFXGUNJLThuIPxU1f3SvDBSQI4hjRNKS9lGo2kYIZbqALkXL-mWyeyWOlmAjiOd9IYFEo87_fmxK8bZUtN8d93ixkJmfnIaeya_8CXxJkU4Vy75FdOkn_fRu3IQbfMZDjGAxqYi6dPEgBRxWb3hC-PTMF6diXwQ/s1280/taibbi.column.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="809" data-original-width="1280" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRKsNHk2msg1DQHa_-nU1LFXGUNJLThuIPxU1f3SvDBSQI4hjRNKS9lGo2kYIZbqALkXL-mWyeyWOlmAjiOd9IYFEo87_fmxK8bZUtN8d93ixkJmfnIaeya_8CXxJkU4Vy75FdOkn_fRu3IQbfMZDjGAxqYi6dPEgBRxWb3hC-PTMF6diXwQ/w400-h253/taibbi.column.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">First thing that came to mind on reading <a href="https://taibbi.substack.com/p/notes-on-a-friday-night" target="_blank">"Twitter Files" writer Matt Taibbi's "delerious reflections"</a> on the process was: Did anybody think about getting him an A.J. Liebling anthology for Christmas? Because he might see something in Liebling's reflections on the World's Greatest Newspaper from 1950:</span><p></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">The visitor to Chicago, awakening unalarmed in his hotel room and receiving the Tribune with
his breakfast tray, takes a look at the headlines and finds himself at
once transported into a land of somber horror. ... As he turns the pages of the Tribune,
the stranger is likely to get the feeling that some of the people and
events he is reading about superficially resemble people and events he
remembers having read about in the world outside, but he never can be
sure.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">That's been my overall response to the "Twitter Files" frenzy. If you're concerned that "the version of the world that was spat out at us from them seemed distorted," wait until you hear about television! Or radio. Or, given that Hearst papers accounted for nearly a fourth of US Sunday circulation as FDR began his first term, the humble newspaper. If you're new to framing theory, here's Robert Entman's explanation from 1993:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">To frame </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient
in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular
problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or
treatment recommendation for the item described.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia, times new roman, serif;">If you can shake off the moral panic over the smartphone as your overlord, you could bring in a number of other theories as well. Cultivation (people who watch a lot of TV tend to think the real world looks like its televised counterpart), agenda-setting (people tend to think issues that get a lot of coverage are important) and the "hostile media" perception (partisans of opposing football teams, or political parties, tend to think the game story is biased against their side) all explain different aspects of how the world outside -- stealing one from Walter Lippmann here -- comes to form the pictures in our heads. There's no constitutional right to a comfy world in which the other idiots out there agree with you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">How long have those pesky media been stealing reality from us? In American journalism, <a href="http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/power/text5/PublickOccurrences.pdf">since before there was a United States</a>. I won't complain if you say the Elizabethan age; here's one from <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=f2qEEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP8&dq=conveniently+sung+to+greensleeves+vultee&ots=A3cVsNu0cT&sig=wzNdMAF8YgkZAd5CVNdtYFdlYdY#v=onepage&q=conveniently%20sung%20to%20greensleeves%20vultee&f=false">the Big Securitization Book</a>:</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>If you encountered the right balladeer at the
right public square in London in 1588, you could learn the names of the 14
recently executed traitors, embedded in a moral lesson about the deserts of
treason and conveniently sung to “Greensleeves.”</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So aside from the persistent inability, First Amendment-wise, to reliably distinguish social media from the government at better than coin-toss levels, what baffles me most about the "Twitter Files" is the quaint belief that someone -- generally "our elite overlords" or some variant on that -- monkeyed with Twitter and ruined forever the level media playing field on which American politics had played out from the dawn of time</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> through 2019 or so.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">To which one could go on and on, but -- has AM radio just entirely vanished from public consciousness, or did none of you out there hear Rush Limbaugh's "<a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/10/09/mega-maga-the-largest-radio-rally-in-history/" target="_blank">Largest Radio Rally in History</a>," featuring two hours or so worth of Donald Trump (to the point where Limbaugh was trying to nudge him off stage*) four weeks before the 2020 election?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">True, the infamous Hunter Biden laptop (or the copy of its hard drive, or whatever) doesn't come up in that transcript, but it was <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/10/23/npr-says-they-wont-waste-time-on-the-hunter-biden-story/" target="_blank">certainly</a> <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/10/22/the-dam-may-be-breaking-on-the-hunter-biden-story/" target="_blank">no secret</a> <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/10/21/did-hunter-biden-leave-his-laptop-to-be-found/" target="_blank">to the Limbaugh audience</a> <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-is-just-a-pawn-in-his-fathers-47-year-scheme/" target="_blank">in the weeks</a> <a href="https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/10/16/rudy-says-hunter-bidens-lawyer-inadvertently-authenticated-the-laptop/" target="_blank">before the election</a>. You can try your own site search at foxnews.com (<a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/npr-slammed-dismissing-hunter-biden-laptop-scandal" target="_blank">replete with complaints</a> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/abc-news-ignored-hunter-biden-laptop" target="_blank">about the rest</a> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/hunter-biden-scandal-ny-times-cnn-biden-miranda-devine" target="_blank">of the media</a>). What you can't do is say that reality was somehow stolen from you because your message wasn't front and center on every platform. That's <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/" target="_blank">Richard Hofstadter territory</a>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>... The modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels
dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their
kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent
the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have
already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old
competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and
communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have
been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents
not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who
are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had
discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be
betrayal from on high.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Twitter Files don't presage another Great Brown Scare (in which assorted "vermin press" figures actually did go on trial) or a crusade against the African American press like J. Edgar Hoover's earlier in World War II (cheered on by right-wing columnists like Westbrook Pegler). They don't herald a war of extermination like the one against the German-language press in the US in 1917-18 (to the satisfaction of the big conservative papers). That's not to say the files raise no concerns at all; it is a mild suggestion that we pay a bit more attention to what reality looks like before we report it stolen.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Yes, we need to stick up for the First Amendment when it's under threat. Yes, it protects your right to say what you damn please about public affairs. But it doesn't require me to go down to the basement and find an amplifier and an extension cord to help you out.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">* I was listening, kids. It's my job.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-14570313936232799642022-12-08T17:03:00.000-05:002022-12-08T17:03:23.305-05:00Making things up about the stylebook<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcoqSdZcgbhVls_56h7cHZ8khfwm28g-mDctnYZ5OMp0KFsgd5N7x9K84BHdxq4-qDAgtVPoykztmhmKJ41_rI5mzzaiYvUsOm4xgjJJMyGgfZ9U46OTNeyabcG8ltyC0FJk9VFUoliegm4HYKak6AhTJQ6J-1Lr7czloNDyIyNokK24UBLw/s401/signal2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="401" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcoqSdZcgbhVls_56h7cHZ8khfwm28g-mDctnYZ5OMp0KFsgd5N7x9K84BHdxq4-qDAgtVPoykztmhmKJ41_rI5mzzaiYvUsOm4xgjJJMyGgfZ9U46OTNeyabcG8ltyC0FJk9VFUoliegm4HYKak6AhTJQ6J-1Lr7czloNDyIyNokK24UBLw/w400-h374/signal2.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>You’d think a truce had been declared in the War on
Christmas or something if the comrades at The Daily Signal (“multimedia news
platform” of <a href="https://www.heritage.org/" target="_blank">the Heritage Foundation</a>) <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/12/08/major-news-style-guide-tells-reporters-dont-use-pro-life-pro-choice-or-pro-abortion-instead-say-anti-abortion-or-abortion-rights/" target="_blank">have time to turn their attention to this</a>:</span><p></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Journalists
are being told not to use the terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” when writing
about abortion. </i><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Fond of
the passive as we are around here, that’s the sort of passive that ought to get
your attention, herding-cats-wise.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;"><i>The Associated Press issued new guidelines for the topic of abortion Monday. The writing stylebook says to now “use the modifiers anti-abortion or abortion-rights; don’t use pro-life, pro-choice or pro-abortion unless they are in quotes or proper names. Avoid abortionist, which connotes a person who performs clandestine abortions.”</i></span></p>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; float: none; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: 1.625rem; margin: 0in 0in 0.25in; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; vertical-align: baseline; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">Do tell!</span></div>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The
Associated Press is the most common stylebook among journalists, used by news
outlets on the political left and right, including The Daily Signal. However,
the updated abortion guidelines are one set of writing rules The Daily Signal
will not be following. </i><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Who’s
going to break it to them? Kids, these are not "new guidelines." The same language appears in the 2018 edition. And here's the "abortion" entry from 2014:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b style="font-style: italic;">abortion </b><i>Use </i>anti-abortion<i> instead of </i>pro-life<i> and </i>pro-abortion rights<i> instead of </i>pro-abortion<i> or </i>pro-choice<i>. </i></span></span></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">2002 is almost identical (both also include the caution about "abortionist"):</span></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia; font-style: italic;">abortion </b><i style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">Use </i><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">anti-abortion</span><i style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;"> instead of </i><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">pro-life</span><i style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;"> and </i><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">abortion rights</span><i style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;"> instead of </i><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">pro-abortion</span><i style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;"> or </i><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">pro-choice</span><i style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">. </i></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">The Daily Signal may be a business-casual version of the Trump cult, but it's hardly the first news outlet to claim allegiance to the AP Stylebook while showing no signs of having ever opened one before the current assignment. (Not for nothing do editors have jokes like "How do you hide a $20 bill from a reporter?") Nor is it the first right-wing outlet to throw a hizzy over an AP style decision; here's <a href="http://headsuptheblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/mirabile-dictu.html" target="_blank">a Fox News lead story panicking over the 2013 decision on "illegal immigrant."</a> And it's hardly the first to overlook the staunchly, often bizarrely, conservative history of AP style. This is the agency, after all, where <a href="http://headsuptheblog.blogspot.com/2020/06/acceptable-in-all-references.html" target="_blank">"black" became "</a></span><span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;"><a href="http://headsuptheblog.blogspot.com/2020/06/acceptable-in-all-references.html" target="_blank">acceptable in all references for <i>Negro</i>"</a> in 1980 and women were allowed to appear without courtesy titles in 1986 -- the same year "Native American" was ruled out because their ancestors had "</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">migrated to the continent over a land bridge from Asia." That combination of foot-dragging and bogus empiricism (don't even get me started on AP and Islam) puts the piece's ill-submerged resentment in a different light:</span></span></span></p><p></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;"><i>Words have power, and it is no secret that the media sometimes uses the power of words to shift or alter the narrative around an issue or story.</i></span></span></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">Yes. That's called "framing," and it's been happening since roughly the dawn of time. Framing is how events turn into stories, and if it bothers you now, you might have some explaining to do about the "<a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2016/06/16/radical-islam-does-matter-in-identifying-enemy-experts-say/" target="_blank">war on terror</a>."</span></span></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">Does this mean -- horrors! -- that The Daily Signal is lying? I'd say this is more accurately described as bullshitting (Frankfurt, 2009). The Daily Signal doesn't really care whether its patently bogus assertion is true. The marks are already in the tent, the band is playing and pretty soon the preacher is going to come on with his best if-that-don't-fetch-'em-I-don't-know Arkansaw tale of how The Media are a step away from stealing your freedoms. But it still wouldn't hurt for someone at the Signal to open a stylebook every now and then. You never can tell when one of the marks will catch on.</span></span></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #3c3c3c; font-family: georgia;">Frankfurt, H.G. (2009). On bullshit. In <i>On Bullshit</i>. Princeton University Press.</span></p></div><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-72992570470222947932021-11-08T20:21:00.003-05:002021-11-08T20:22:15.786-05:00Peak Fox<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMWrVL-HYOxec1W6QzdsHsGBPUYLBHXffb1-3Nbli6RNanMuFyt7-AyLxXHXwRDh33nfWS8FeA-DiXNq9esdMkPCK2u3i2wkw1Xxn1EU9sqwV0ZTwn1MhEMedUPzvcUzL7jrAx/s768/FoxLede.2021.1108.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="411" data-original-width="768" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMWrVL-HYOxec1W6QzdsHsGBPUYLBHXffb1-3Nbli6RNanMuFyt7-AyLxXHXwRDh33nfWS8FeA-DiXNq9esdMkPCK2u3i2wkw1Xxn1EU9sqwV0ZTwn1MhEMedUPzvcUzL7jrAx/w400-h214/FoxLede.2021.1108.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: georgia;">That's the trouble with turning your back on Fox -- the backlog piles up until you hardly know where to start digging. But this Monday evening lead story deserves a special prize of some sort, because it has nothing (no, literally) to do with <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnns-april-ryan-pete-buttigieg-address-racism-roadways" target="_blank">the text it links to</a>.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Fox's stylistic flailing over the past few days has brought up some entertaining signals about news practice. Friday's top headlines played with "mega-spending bills" and "costly agenda" before setting on "socialist spending bill." By Saturday, it was "Swamp Spending Spree" and "MEGA-SPENDING agenda" (the excess caps in the subheds have a certain redtop flavour to them). The shift to listing all the zeroes in "massive $1,200,000,000,000 infrastructure is a style violation," but you have to admit it looks more dramatic than "$1.2 trillion," even when Fox doesn't remember to put in all the zeroes.* So the "YOUR money" above isn't too far out of tune, even if, you know, that's sort of where public funding comes from. But back to Our Top Story:<br /></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">White House correspondent April Ryan was ridiculed on Monday after asking Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about the racism "built into the roadways." <br /><br />During the White House press briefing, Buttigieg was taking questions about the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which passed through Congress last week. Ryan took the opportunity to ask Buttigieg about the Biden administration's plans to "deconstruct the racism" that’s built into America's infrastructure. </span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Hang on to the "was ridiculed" for a bit, because we have a specific bridge to talk about, right?</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> "Also can you give us the construct of how you will deconstruct the racism that was built into roadways?" Ryan asked.<br /><br />Ryan then referenced an earlier interview Buttigieg gave The Grio in April when he said "there is racism physically built into some of our highways."<br /><br />"I’m still surprised that had some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a White and a Black neighborhood or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach, or that would have been, in New York was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices," Buttigieg responded during the press briefing. <br /><br />He added "I don’t think we have anything to lose by confronting that simple reality, and I think we have everything to gain by acknowledging it and then dealing with it, which is why they are reconnecting communities that billion dollars is something we want to get to work right away putting to work."</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ahem? Bridge? MY money?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Republicans and critics piled on Ryan's question for insinuating that roads are "racist."<br /><br />Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tweeted, "The roads are racist. We must get rid of roads."<br /><br />Republican Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance also weighed in. </i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And at this point we're into the standard "blasted" or "mocked" Fox story: quote-tweeting the Usual Suspects (if you're looking for a content analysis project, go see which ones you can associate with which Fox bylines). But still no bridge:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>... Ryan has been criticized for her liberal bias and for openly cheering on Democrat officials. In December, the CNN political analyst praised former President Obama in light of his new memoir.<br /><br />"You cannot work in that special, unique place and not have memories, and you are one of my fondest memories, and I thank you," she wrote on Instagram.</i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">We can't exactly call the hed a lie, since there may yet be some trillion dollar plan funded with YOUR money that singles out a racist bridge for doom. Somehow, you'd think a Fox reader would want to know that. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">* Thanks, Garrett</span></span><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-34282859018617858092021-08-28T20:21:00.001-04:002021-08-28T20:21:38.469-04:00Roaring and bubbling<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAIeWiqvjf0QFgg3BxOtKX9BXM9TNVs6hHkpv9q0_R9KZfI3azXqfZ5EGGiMoMS8eTfI2lXHkFMrozqrm9WmsJK8PkhkpL1TIY9Cl7XKj92wq8ctuaiTg8z_difEgfGP_QjiTe/s241/clinton.0825.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="241" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAIeWiqvjf0QFgg3BxOtKX9BXM9TNVs6hHkpv9q0_R9KZfI3azXqfZ5EGGiMoMS8eTfI2lXHkFMrozqrm9WmsJK8PkhkpL1TIY9Cl7XKj92wq8ctuaiTg8z_difEgfGP_QjiTe/s0/clinton.0825.png" width="241" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Good thing there's no international mayhem or weather turmoil to cover at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network! Here's <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bill-and-hillary-clinton-spotted-strolling-in-the-hamptons-weeks-before-miniseries-on-lewinsky-scandal">the No. 5 story on the foxnews.com homepage</a> from Wednesday evening:</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Former President Bill Clinton and his wife former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were spotted strolling the beach in the Hamptons, east of New York City, <u>as the Monica Lewinsky scandal roars back into public consciousness</u> via an upcoming television special.<br /><br /><u>The sullen pair</u>, accompanied by Secret Service, walked along a beach in the affluent Amagansett, New York, before Hillary took a brief break on a boardwalk while Bill briefly walked off before rejoining her and continuing on the walk.</i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTRztMsq1k7TKSA20R-pZYB47E-BCKLRy5aPqfkZyxF2ri0oq-0oMfNE_D5DvoTEa4opzbF3gdhnfBm28HObbJv64KqkuweKzSdTvoPKJfn9ASMjkab2gwe7I7Sn3mXQkPWZbI/s250/clinton.0828.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="187" data-original-width="250" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTRztMsq1k7TKSA20R-pZYB47E-BCKLRy5aPqfkZyxF2ri0oq-0oMfNE_D5DvoTEa4opzbF3gdhnfBm28HObbJv64KqkuweKzSdTvoPKJfn9ASMjkab2gwe7I7Sn3mXQkPWZbI/s0/clinton.0828.png" width="250" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">As the inside hed notes, the spotting took place "weeks before miniseries" (by which it appears to mean Sept. 7, allegedly the release of a 10-part FX series called "Impeachment: American Crime Story"). But why waste time on details when there's more BREAKING NEWS? For example, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/chelsea-clinton-spotted-jogging-in-the-hamptons-weeks-before-lewinsky-miniseries-premiere#">the No. 5 story on the Saturday homepage</a>:</span><p></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Chelsea Clinton was spotted out for a jog in the Hamptons Thursday, <u>weeks before her family’s personal life will be brought back into the national spotlight</u> in the form of a documentary on her father’s impeachment.<br /><br />Clinton, 41, was seen in several pictures, obtained by Page Six, out on a solo run wearing bike shorts, running shoes, and a shirt from a popular Manhattan restaurant after keeping a low-profile during most of the pandemic.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Funny, each story concludes with the same three paragraphs:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">The show, a 10-part miniseries, stars Clive Owen as Bill Clinton, Edie Falco as Hillary Clinton, Sarah Paulson as Linda Tripp, and Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinsky. <br /><br />The show's executive producer, Brad Simpson, recently said he doesn't think anyone in the Clinton camp has seen the series and doesn't suspect that they will watch it. <br /><br />"No one, as far as we know, from the Clinton camp has seen this series," Simpson said. "Of course, I’m curious what they would think. I don’t imagine she will watch, no matter how emphatic we are to her."</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">One has to wonder what they'll come up with next. Actually, one doesn't.</span><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-90390867704773145062021-08-23T22:48:00.001-04:002021-08-23T22:48:27.145-04:00And sit up straight when I'm talking to you<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVPtisz5lSUPUjdKhw4DSyKOpbiwevP1bULF_lOr6LgeirIzVpx1vFoWuqXgR8URlG8HXBxpIzwqqfweV2NPpqLYZNbFsCAehVyXEGwmTvts1kAp1hyphenhyphen3i5VJ0nWzjtFfStzEFz/s293/fox.laugh.2021.0823.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="221" data-original-width="293" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVPtisz5lSUPUjdKhw4DSyKOpbiwevP1bULF_lOr6LgeirIzVpx1vFoWuqXgR8URlG8HXBxpIzwqqfweV2NPpqLYZNbFsCAehVyXEGwmTvts1kAp1hyphenhyphen3i5VJ0nWzjtFfStzEFz/w320-h242/fox.laugh.2021.0823.png" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you wandered into the Fair 'n' Balanced homepage Monday afternoon from somewhere in the adult world, the presuppositions in <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/meghan-mccain-kamala-harris-joaquin-phoenix-joker">the No. 4 story</a> might have seemed a little unusual:</span><p></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Former "View" co-host Meghan McCain scolded Vice President Kamala Harris Monday for laughing when asked about the ongoing crisis in Afghanistan, comparing the "craven" veep to Joaquin Phoenix’s mentally troubled character in the 2019 film "Joker." <br /><br />Harris initially laughed when asked about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the controversial evacuation process as Americans try to exit the country due to the Taliban’s swift takeover. <u>Harris has a long history of laughing when confronted with tough questions and famously giggled on multiple occasions when she was asked about visiting the southern border</u>. </span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Long history, famously giggled -- but wait! There's more:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">... Phoenix’s "Joker" also suffered from uncontrollable laughter, sometimes at inappropriate times. He was eventually driven insane and became a psychopathic murderer. McCain made the comparison after Harris burst into laughter when a reporter shouted a question seeking her response to reports of Americans being trapped in Afghanistan. <br /><br />"Hold on, slow down everybody," Harris said while laughing. She eventually answered the question but critics slammed her for appearing to find humor in the questions.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you're new here, let's flash back to March and the best-known case of Fox policing Harris's inability to sit up straight and act like a young lady. Here's <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-laughs-border-visit-reporter-question">the No. 2 story</a> from March 22:<br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOawnlhtUjr08Xa7w7f-o5Fii9nNFpRIEUP5OBVrFp_E8jI0WZ9WI-bEqyX9oZRSJ0LWgsGBaVnASUZPIXhC4wPTHdbOLmqHBzZAfjenz20CNgJvF0q2HeRHpgdRsKResQUrrz/s265/laff.0322.No2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="265" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOawnlhtUjr08Xa7w7f-o5Fii9nNFpRIEUP5OBVrFp_E8jI0WZ9WI-bEqyX9oZRSJ0LWgsGBaVnASUZPIXhC4wPTHdbOLmqHBzZAfjenz20CNgJvF0q2HeRHpgdRsKResQUrrz/s0/laff.0322.No2.png" width="265" /></a></div><p></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Vice President Kamala Harris laughed while responding to a question from a reporter who asked Monday if she would be visiting the border amid the growing migrant crisis.<br /><br />While taking questions from reporters outside of Air Force One, Harris was asked if she had "plans to visit" the southern border as the immigration crisis continues to develop.<br /><br />The vice president responded to the query with a "not today" before laughing. She continued on to say that she had visited "before" and that she probably would go back.<br /><br />The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News’ question as to whether they thought Harris’ response was appropriate, given the situation at the border that the Biden administration refuses to call a "crisis."</span></i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghUY9Rh-nwVTtRA0DAtvVPOjm7GZaxmNjG7bUZ4E9blq-hCdYNdNs62WZoUnvcOsHIIbsxCuTCcyY5_29TdZAbk7JHN1iCkRd1JpBXbTZ3_uO3kVfkYRxiXu-CPlr0XR2YeG8p/s267/laff.0323.No4.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="204" data-original-width="267" height="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghUY9Rh-nwVTtRA0DAtvVPOjm7GZaxmNjG7bUZ4E9blq-hCdYNdNs62WZoUnvcOsHIIbsxCuTCcyY5_29TdZAbk7JHN1iCkRd1JpBXbTZ3_uO3kVfkYRxiXu-CPlr0XR2YeG8p/s0/laff.0323.No4.png" width="267" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Things got worse <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-laughing-border-question-backlash-cornyn">the next day</a>, because backlash:<br /><br /><i>Vice President Kamala Harris is facing a backlash after laughing when a reporter asked if she planned to visit the southern border amid the migrant crisis. <br /><br />"Kamala Harris laughs at a reporter who asked her if she has plans to visit the border. Don’t believe this administration when they say they are serious about solving this crisis," Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.</i></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And by the time we got to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-laughs-schools-learning-pavlich">reporting on the afternoon talk shows March 30</a>, Fox was in full behavior-cop mode:</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHPLF5fwIq5sBdjXNOgL3dfBx6ZbiajdJMIGKxWTKQmMImA1AeP5TrWCyPtI5uz6QcbfUqF0W062BzWi40yarlAB0yhc0xpCr2mufFyGcH2XsytC6cXIuI2tCe1Fiqw34yruxa/s261/laff.0330.No4.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="195" data-original-width="261" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHPLF5fwIq5sBdjXNOgL3dfBx6ZbiajdJMIGKxWTKQmMImA1AeP5TrWCyPtI5uz6QcbfUqF0W062BzWi40yarlAB0yhc0xpCr2mufFyGcH2XsytC6cXIuI2tCe1Fiqw34yruxa/s0/laff.0330.No4.png" width="261" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The Biden administration's border policies are creating a catastrophe for everyone, Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich said Tuesday on "Outnumbered," in reaction to migrants receiving in-person schooling in San Diego while American students are continuing to learn from home. Pavlich blasted Vice President Kamala Harris for laughing off a question about the subject. <br /><br />KATIE PAVLICH: "I don’t understand what she thinks is funny. American parents are getting screwed. Their kids are falling behind and the very people Democrats claim to be standing up for, minority students, aren’t getting an education and aren’t going to be able to compete with their peers in the United States. Not to mention across the world. And just on a basic staffer level, has nobody sat down with the vice president and said, you have to stop laughing when you’re asked serious questions. It makes you look out of touch, it makes you look incompetent. That’s a basic thing that they should’ve fixed by now.</i> <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Questions don't become "tough" or "serious" by themselves, of course. They become "tough" <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/psaki-vp-harris-border-diplomacy-childrens-book-peter-doocy">through being asked by Fox reporters</a>. Here's a Peter Doocy example:<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Doocy also asked about news that copies of Harris’ children’s book "Superheroes Are Everywhere," published in 2019, were given to migrant children arriving in the U.S.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Even Fox <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-southern-border-migrant-kids-veeps-book">eventually had to admit that the "Superheroes" story was bogus</a>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><em>At least one copy of Harris’ children’s book, "Superheroes Are Everywhere," was made available for migrant children arriving at the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center, a recently converted influx facility, along with basic hygiene supplies and clothing. The book was part of a citywide book and toy drive to support the migrant children staying there. </em></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><em>... EDITOR'S NOTE: In a previous version of this story, it was implied
there were multiple copies of Harris' book available for children in
welcome packs. </em> </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">By July 3 (yeah, slow holiday weekend), <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/watters-kamalas-cackle-a-defense-mechanism-that-often-works-failed-miserably-vs-lester-holt">her <strike>uppity</strike> impudent cackle had become the lead story</a>:* <br /></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC9IXjhYCHEvdnBa_g2uZGUdxkPvnI5BaAdINa2QSXtsbTugmjbZU9sBED1lJyOYuRmXffvVGPznlOi_JtxlhxcS3dHotilEaIqFS2i9mb9peK9qvE8UI7biCP9jtnx1_9NeVG/s609/laff.0703.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="609" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC9IXjhYCHEvdnBa_g2uZGUdxkPvnI5BaAdINa2QSXtsbTugmjbZU9sBED1lJyOYuRmXffvVGPznlOi_JtxlhxcS3dHotilEaIqFS2i9mb9peK9qvE8UI7biCP9jtnx1_9NeVG/w400-h294/laff.0703.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Jesse Watters said Friday on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ that Vice President Kamala Harris' signature 'cackle' is a "defense mechanism" when she is faced with a question she can't answer or doesn't want to respond to, adding that it often is employed to lighten the interview – which he said notably failed during a recent back-and-forth with NBC News anchor Lester Holt.<br /><br />JESSE WATTERS: as someone who made his career doing man-on-the-street interviews, I feel like I am uniquely qualified to recognize when someone is uncomfortable in public -- and yes, this is a sign of discomfort when she's presented with the topic or question, when she's unsure or uncomfortable, she results to cackling. </i><br /></span><p></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">In our industry, we refer to this as a defense mechanism. In layman's terms, it perhaps would be a glitch in the system, a tick, or a 'tell' in poker and she does it for several reasons: One, to soothe her anxiety. Two, to buy her time if she's unsure, she can use that time to formulate a response. Three, to kind of guide the vibe of the interview from a serious to a less serious one, and then finally, it is kind of a lame attempt to form a bond with the person asking her a tough question. </span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Going back to last fall, one could point out that <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/kamala-harris-laughs-when-asked-if-she-has-socialist-perspective">the laugh is often a response to a "stupid" question</a>: </span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sen. Kamala Harris D-Calif., laughed when asked during an interview Sunday if she would advocate for a “socialist or progressive perspective” if elected.<br /><br />CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell asked Harris the question during a "60 Minutes" interview with her and the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">... and even then can quickly spin off <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-laughs-socialist-views-ben-shapiro">a second story</a>:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Podcast host and author Ben Shapiro on Monday ripped Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., for laughing at an interviewer who asked if she had socialist views.<br /><br />“Kamala Harris -- I would love to play poker with Kamala Harris because she has the most obvious tell in the history of politics which is if she is asked a question that she does not want to answer, she breaks into that insane Joker laugh and it is pretty wild,” the host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" told “Fox & Friends.”<br /><br />Shapiro said that “there is nothing funny about that question” and the follow-up question about her being a “liberal senator.”</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's almost as if ... I don't know, there were some immutable demographic characteristics that make Kamala Harris's response to stupid questions especially terrifying at Fox News. What could those characteristics be?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">* It's a bit odd to have the "Fox News Staff" byline, rather than a named staffer, atop the lead story, but Fox talk shows have a habit of producing MAJOR BREAKING NEWS like this.</span></span><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-461753758872294732021-07-29T21:24:00.000-04:002021-07-29T21:24:05.835-04:00Today in Washington coverage<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWgqjj-WEPj5pBHButRodTOKOrm_ygcIwQFxYfXYiHXaVxANywrrDWrB6wpZKSHys4BWHQPSjalyqCAggS-6yI7hRY3duSCeCQiToXyDd_SL9t7fT_lQq0xDv3aeXFq6DlQJbd/s513/fox.doocy.2021.0729.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="285" data-original-width="513" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWgqjj-WEPj5pBHButRodTOKOrm_ygcIwQFxYfXYiHXaVxANywrrDWrB6wpZKSHys4BWHQPSjalyqCAggS-6yI7hRY3duSCeCQiToXyDd_SL9t7fT_lQq0xDv3aeXFq6DlQJbd/w400-h223/fox.doocy.2021.0729.png" width="400" /></a></div><p><span> <span style="font-family: georgia;">You guys! Did you know that the Fair 'n' Balanced Network has an actual Peter Doocy beat? Here's <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-vaccinated-need-masks-true-at-time">the lead story (above) from Thursday evening</a>:</span></span></p><p><i><span><span style="font-family: georgia;">President Biden grew heated Thursday while defending his administration's flip-flop on whether vaccinated Americans need to wear masks. <br /><br /><u>Fox News' Peter Doocy pressed Biden about his administration's reversal</u>, pointing to the president's statement in May that, "If you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask."</span></span></i></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now, sure, this could be <a href="President Biden grew heated Thursday while defending his administration's flip-flop on whether vaccinated Americans need to wear masks. Fox News' Peter Doocy pressed Biden about his administration's reversal, pointing to the president's statement in May that, "If you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask." ">just</a> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-snaps-at-question-on-cognitive-test-likens-it-to-asking-reporter-if-hes-a-junkie">another</a> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-snaps-reporter-over-putin-question-wrong-business">Shouty</a> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/psaki-biden-refusal-afghanistan">Biden</a> story, or it could be just another anecdote illustrating why Fox News shouldn't have been drawing Messerschmitts in its textbook in fifth grade science class. But there's a more persistent pattern here:</span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-masks-extra-protection-for-vaccinated-vaccines-work">July 27, 2nd paragraph</a>:<br /><i>Press secretary Jen Psaki responded to a question from <u>Fox News' Peter Doocy</u> by saying that masks are an "extra step" that provides further protection against COVID-19, while maintaining that vaccines against COVID-19 "work."</i> </span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/psaki-dodges-question-bidens-gun-violence">July 26, 2nd paragraph</a>:<br /> <i>During her daily press briefing, Psaki was asked by <u>Fox News’ Peter Doocy</u> whether Biden’s "comprehensive strategy" to combat gun crime, first announced June 23, was effective in cities like Chicago, where 73 people were shot over the weekend, 11 of them fatally</i>.</span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/psaki-biden-critical-race-theory-curriculum-local-schools">July 22, 6th paragraph</a>:<br /><i>During her daily press briefing Thursday, Psaki was pressed by <u>Fox News' Peter Doocy</u> on whether the administration planned to "follow up with school districts to make sure that the Abolitionist Teaching Network material is not in lesson plans."</i></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/psaki-texas-democrats-trip-to-dc-super-spreader">July 20, 2nd paragraph</a>:<br /><i><u>Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy</u> on Tuesday asked White House press secretary Jen Psaki if the event was considered a "super-spreader," saying that "more than 10%" of the traveling Texas Democrats have tested positive.</i></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/psaki-trump-covid-psa-welcome">July 19, 2nd paragraph</a>:<br /><i><u>Fox News’ Peter Doocy</u> questioned Psaki during the administration’s daily press briefing, asking about "vaccine hesitancy" and if President Biden would reach out to Trump to "cut a PSA" telling people to get vaccinated against COVID-19.</i></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/twitter-psaki-big-tech-unite-bans-misinformation">July 16, 8th paragraph</a>:<br /> <i>While questioning Psaki on Friday, <u>Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy</u> noted the checkered history of Big Tech deciding what was and wasn't misinformation, such as Facebook infamously flagging posts that hypothesized the coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan lab.</i></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/psaki-called-out-over-white-house-use-of-anonymous-briefings">July 4, 3rd paragraph</a>:<br /><i>Jacobs’ tweet was a reaction to a White House exchange between Psaki and <u>Fox News’ Peter Doocy</u>, in which Doocy questioned Psaki on whether the White House was concerned about recent reports of an "abusive environment" inside the office of Vice President Kamala Harris.</i></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/psaki-balks-at-16-cent-bbq-tweet-being-compared-to-gas-prices-if-you-dont-like-hot-dogs-you-may-not-care">July 2, lede</a>:<br /><i>White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki pushed back on <u>Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy</u>'s question about a pun-filled tweet from 1600 Pennsylvania Av celebrating a reported 16-cent drop in the cost of an Independence Day barbecue.</i><br /></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/media-psakis-claim-republicans-not-dems-defund-the-police">July 1, 2nd paragraph</a>:<br /><i>"Well, the president did mention that the American Rescue Plan, the state and local funding, something that was supported by the president, a lot of Democrats who supported and voted for the bill, could help ensure local cops were kept on the beat in communities across the country. As you know, [it] didn't receive a single Republican vote. That funding has been used to keep cops on the beat," Psaki said in response to a question from <u>Fox News' Peter Doocy</u> on Tuesday.</i></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/psaki-republicans-defund-the-police-american-rescue-plan">June 28, paragraph 3</a>:<br /><i>"Something one of the advisers said this weekend, Cedric Richmond, he said Republicans defunded the police by not supporting the American Rescue Plan," <u>Fox News' Peter Doocy</u> asked Psaki on Monday. "But how is it that that is an argument to be made when the president never mentioned needing money for police to stop a crime wave when he was selling the American Rescue Plan?"</i></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gwen-berry-flag-snubbing-us-track-and-field-star-defended-by-the-white-house">Bonus June 28, also paragraph 3</a>:<br /><i>"This weekend, Gwen Barry, who hopes to represent the United States as an Olympian on the hammer throwing events, won a bronze medal at the trials, and then she turned her back on the flag while the anthem played," <u>Fox News' Peter Doocy</u> said to Psaki during the daily White House briefing. "Does President Biden think that is appropriate behavior for someone who hopes to represent Team USA?"</i><br /></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/psaki-biden-pledge-end-cash-bail-violent-crime-surge">June 22, paragraph 4</a>:<br /><i>Asked by <u>Fox News’ Peter Doocy</u> if Biden still thinks now is the right time to end the cash bail system, Psaki said: "I don’t think I have any new position on that for you but I’m happy to check."</i> <br /></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;">One could go on -- back to <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/doocy-psaki-snubbed-administration-policy">the glorious days of March 26, for example</a>:<br /><i><u>Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy</u> confronted press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday about why he was snubbed during President Biden’s first press conference, noting Fox has "never been" on the list of Biden's pre-approved reporters.</i></span></span></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIeycXH85BZilx3bd7xoDFPV5hbrOMk-Kd30gpnTTXcBkrT0Mi37gVpKeOsftbpMSA2HxU7hfOW6nBrXgRv3AtAA47ImCdcRFRamsdIGvmNoitqSOvvk1zjd1MaaEjqhPliLGR/s332/ironcross.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="332" data-original-width="160" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIeycXH85BZilx3bd7xoDFPV5hbrOMk-Kd30gpnTTXcBkrT0Mi37gVpKeOsftbpMSA2HxU7hfOW6nBrXgRv3AtAA47ImCdcRFRamsdIGvmNoitqSOvvk1zjd1MaaEjqhPliLGR/s320/ironcross.jpg" width="154" /></a></div>But you can actually play this game yourself at home! Meanwhile, enjoy the <i>Chicago Tribune</i>'s coverage of that glorious day in December 1942 when FDR brought an Iron Cross to a press conference as a present for John O'Donnell of the isolationist (<i>ahem</i>, "prewar anti-interventionist") <i>New York Daily News</i>. The record's not entirely clear on why. Most accounts from the time point to an allegedly satirical column O'Donnell had written, though in 1947, O'Donnell suggested that FDR had made the play to influence the jury pool in O'Donnell's upcoming libel suit against the <i>Philadelphia Record</i>, which had called him a Naziphile,* out of revenge for O'Donnell's April 1941 story contending that Roosevelt was violating the Neutrality Act.<p></p><p><span><span style="font-family: georgia;">I haven't seen any suggestions besides the <i>Trib</i>'s that other correspondents were "incensed," though it's entirely possible. But if you're wondering whether elbows have been thrown harder in the briefing room before, the answer is yes.<br /></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span>* That's <i>Daily News</i> style; in the World's Greatest Newspaper, it's "naziphile"</span></span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-17295796215125804862021-07-26T16:49:00.002-04:002021-07-26T16:49:28.693-04:00Read story before writing hed. Wait, don't.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg05y6mOmM1npAE8F3CKYwIpyuxC2zMB3gO9T5V6R9kg8Mx-MfUBM_LqzSem9HhjvMnvJWsOrE5z3jqXtQrak3mqv5rS7Y1LbRRBWUgHJIfHmCztUiXmv0xQQDWnNKxozl6EeUr/s527/fox.HedFib.2021.0726.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="279" data-original-width="527" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg05y6mOmM1npAE8F3CKYwIpyuxC2zMB3gO9T5V6R9kg8Mx-MfUBM_LqzSem9HhjvMnvJWsOrE5z3jqXtQrak3mqv5rS7Y1LbRRBWUgHJIfHmCztUiXmv0xQQDWnNKxozl6EeUr/w400-h211/fox.HedFib.2021.0726.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: georgia;">Sometimes you wonder why the Fair 'n' Balanced Network even bothers to write the stories, given that all the information you need is in the homepage display type. Note, above, what Floridians are mad about and what they're trying to do in Monday afternoon's lead story. Then compare it with <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/florida-sued-ending-unemployment-benefits">the text at FoxBusiness</a>:</span><p></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Out-of-work Americans in Florida filed a lawsuit against Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday seeking to reinstate a pandemic relief program that paid out an extra $300 a week in unemployment benefits.<br /><br />In a complaint filed late Sunday on behalf of 10 unemployed Floridians, three attorneys ... argued that DeSantis, as well as the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity and its director Dane Eagle, violated their "clear legal and statutory duty to secure such benefits for employees" by prematurely ending the benefits.<br /><br />The attorneys are requesting an emergency injunction to force Florida to reinstate the $300 a week benefit until the case is decided, as well as provide four weeks of retroactive benefits.<br /><br />"The unemployed of Florida need these benefits to pay basic living expenses such as rent, utilities, food and medicine," the suit said.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Suppose there's a spot on the cattle train to Siberia for the poor wretch who thought they were assigned to write a story about a lawsuit?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-70978862500327800322021-07-02T21:34:00.000-04:002021-07-02T21:34:22.755-04:00Four wings good! Two wings bad!<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDixDNZhMlCml61TOTxA1XeOKLcQv-dYjIcrilYfToEkw-stBgTAZqnEUdYeR1KupDJI58rWzwtBAqHHP302Eli1nPS0N6AlrNvkuDUSwfPhTOANb1Zft02fqTBvg_uaeNE30F/s525/fox.grill.2021.0702.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="323" data-original-width="525" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDixDNZhMlCml61TOTxA1XeOKLcQv-dYjIcrilYfToEkw-stBgTAZqnEUdYeR1KupDJI58rWzwtBAqHHP302Eli1nPS0N6AlrNvkuDUSwfPhTOANb1Zft02fqTBvg_uaeNE30F/w400-h246/fox.grill.2021.0702.png" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As you can tell from Friday evening's lead story, the Fair 'n' Balanced Network is <i>very, very upset </i>that some administrations <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/psaki-balks-at-16-cent-bbq-tweet-being-compared-to-gas-prices-if-you-dont-like-hot-dogs-you-may-not-care" target="_blank">have so little regard for America that they tweet about the price of a holiday cookout</a>:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki pushed back on Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy's question about a pun-filled tweet from 1600 Pennsylvania Av celebrating a reported 16-cent drop in the cost of an Independence Day barbecue.<br /><br />"Planning a cookout this year? Ketchup on the news," the White House tweeted Thursday. "According to the Farm Bureau, the cost of a 4th of July BBQ is down from last year. It’s a fact you must-hear(d) – Hot dog, the Biden economic plan is working. And that’s something we can all relish."<br /><br />"Sixteen cents?" Doocy asked after noting the tweet.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">(Yes, Fox needs someone else to write about Doocy's performance at the briefings.)</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Psaki replied that there has "been a reduction in some of the costs of key components" of barbecuing. Doocy followed-up by asking whether such a discount is truly impactful given the more-than-$1-per-gallon rise in gas prices since Biden took office – as the administration has taken several steps to curtail America's energy production.</span></i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">How do you suppose it looked in ... <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/barbecue-bummers-grilling-season-kicks-off-to-sticker-shock-and-shortages">oh, let's say, 2014</a>?</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1c424GMZOD6saAoo8oI59iOpEnSZOtzKIpG7BK-w0q3Gy6Ix2YTpkstIDk9ybSL9Gie9upLvr2XqYMYnCH_AE9vZ-2VyDKw1PWx9BkH6098KHpWWCchC59Rp8pL1tBMw_wyME/s219/q.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1c424GMZOD6saAoo8oI59iOpEnSZOtzKIpG7BK-w0q3Gy6Ix2YTpkstIDk9ybSL9Gie9upLvr2XqYMYnCH_AE9vZ-2VyDKw1PWx9BkH6098KHpWWCchC59Rp8pL1tBMw_wyME/s0/q.png" /></a></div><p></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Before you polish up the tongs for the grilling season, brace yourself. Rising prices or shortages of many summer barbecue stables may put a damper on that Memorial Day party.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">(Let's go ahead and stipulate here that "barbecue stables" is at least as bad as "must-hear(d)," which is from the nether pits of hell itself.)<br /></span><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />From booze to burgers, a spike in demand for some classic food and drink items, coupled with harsh weather conditions, has made it more expensive than ever to get your grill fired up. </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Read on to see how your favorite summer foods could go up in smoke -- and plan accordingly. <br /></span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Does that sound <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_wires/2008May21/0,4675,CostlyCookouts,00.html">a bit like what you read in May 2008</a>?</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Hamburgers and hot dogs? Check. Lighter fluid? Check. Beer? Check. More money?<br /><br />Americans are about to fire up their barbecues for the start of the summer cookout season, and one thing has become painfully apparent: It's going to cost a lot more than it did last year to roast a burger, or just about any other barbecue favorite, on the grill.<br /><br />Food inflation is the highest in almost two decades, driven by record prices for oil, gas and mounting global demand for staples such as wheat and corn, and for proteins such as chicken. And that's reaching into Americans' backyards.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/meat-cuts-to-avoid-as-the-price-of-beef-spikes">How about in 2013</a>?</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Talk about a grill buster. Just in time for summer barbecue season, the price of beef is skyrocketing, which is putting out the flames of meat lovers everywhere.<br /><br />A ground beef burger costs $3.26 a pound, up from $2.99 a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Steak averages $4.81 a pound at the store and ground beef $3.51 — historically high numbers, according to economists.<br /><br />The spike is caused in part by high feed costs because of several droughts that have led to the smallest number of cattle in the U.S. herd since 1952. Last year’s drought — the worst in U.S. history — dried up grazing grasses and sent the costs of corn and soybeans, both used in cattle feed, soaring. The current drought in the Southwest continues to wipe out the feed and make it very expensive to raise cattle.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Good thing <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/meat-cuts-to-avoid-as-the-price-of-beef-spikes">our commenters in 2014</a> knew who to blame, huh?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The
cost of living will necessarily rise under my administration, in order
to justify my flaky social engineering scheme. Coincidentally, I'll also
offer to buy your votes with promises of free stuff.<br /><br />Hey, mon, obum says we are doing fine in fact better than ever. Guess, that boy, as never been to the grocery store.<br /><br />All
food prices are rising at an alarming rate.This is a sure fire way to
assure a higher percentage of people will become dependant on government
assistance</span></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Obama
goes to Martha's Vineyard, takes two whole 747's and a separate $$$$
plane for his dog just like last time, heee really cares that you have a
more expensive BBQ rib,,,,,can't you see him cry?<br /><br />EVERY single
stable facet of the American economy is being attacked in one way or
another by the obama group. WATCH OUT AMERICA ! ! ! From the Coal
mines to the back yard vegetable garden, we are being monitored and
CONTROLLED ! ! ! </span></i></span></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">No, I'm not suggesting that we should be kinder to inept PR efforts. But given Fox's concern with beer prices, I do think we can conclude by paraphrasing a wise photographer I once worked with: Why drink with Fox when you can drink alone?</span></span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-31941338612508772092021-06-09T12:55:00.005-04:002021-06-09T12:55:35.805-04:00Some days you're the windshield ...<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> ... and some days you're the bug.* So you can see how the Fair 'n' Balanced Network might have gotten a little confused while mixing its metaphors Tuesday night. At 8 p.m., Biden's the bulldozer:</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkZa-mR9_MKMWTTdiemtMpIvZpFlkJGjFFZrhymvqpww_Awf9O4e_w174ty2L4N4Q1qA8zK4pP5ADLjOwceR8IKYtvwSQSlXTlT6ZlV_FlzPBXXDOBARFiRs8ql_hOAtHJN-g6/s243/biden.bulldozer.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="171" data-original-width="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkZa-mR9_MKMWTTdiemtMpIvZpFlkJGjFFZrhymvqpww_Awf9O4e_w174ty2L4N4Q1qA8zK4pP5ADLjOwceR8IKYtvwSQSlXTlT6ZlV_FlzPBXXDOBARFiRs8ql_hOAtHJN-g6/s0/biden.bulldozer.png" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">By 10 p.m., when the story has been promoted to the lead position, he's the roadblock:</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiybhMgFFME1MFTcgx9XXR2ocApHaIpH3uGjeOM26-1xQjnxfFLowmrudUrcWcXh8hPwBVALiyVvjQfPIiTez_cNrj_-UzXmrbiNvc0e691m1WMWmK0gnB1omGZGSD_i-pM2twi/s479/biden.roadblock.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="313" data-original-width="479" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiybhMgFFME1MFTcgx9XXR2ocApHaIpH3uGjeOM26-1xQjnxfFLowmrudUrcWcXh8hPwBVALiyVvjQfPIiTez_cNrj_-UzXmrbiNvc0e691m1WMWmK0gnB1omGZGSD_i-pM2twi/s320/biden.roadblock.PNG" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">One of the few useful admonitions in Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" is the one about the high likelihood of bullshit that obtains when two critics say opposite things about the same work: its aliveness vs. its deadness, for example. You can be forgiven for wondering if the hed writers at Fox have to be told what to think before they know what to say.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">* Thank you, Mary Chapin Carpenter </span></span><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-57574227018476028222021-03-24T22:00:00.001-04:002021-03-24T22:00:15.123-04:00The makings of a Trend<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvzAadNXL6KgNqtQdZyCI0dLvpsCovSUcNpLhOCVoZu4WFSQYv1X1wF6ubDfJmbHT5zMh7wRubLhevXuYbjPxUJ8DMR9FogJsrBMxVY_rXN5ZNW94D8vlrPcHuzvLsEdDlRU84/s595/Fox1.2021.0324.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="521" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvzAadNXL6KgNqtQdZyCI0dLvpsCovSUcNpLhOCVoZu4WFSQYv1X1wF6ubDfJmbHT5zMh7wRubLhevXuYbjPxUJ8DMR9FogJsrBMxVY_rXN5ZNW94D8vlrPcHuzvLsEdDlRU84/w350-h400/Fox1.2021.0324.png" width="350" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Even on Planet Fox, this is an achievement: The top two stories are not just about the same event, they're in effect the same story. At top is <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cuomo-directed-ny-health-officials-conduct-prioritized-covid-19-testing-for-his-relatives-report">a rewrite of an Albany Times-Union story</a> about Gov. Cuomo's (allegedly nepotistic) vaccine priorities. In the No. 2 position is ... <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-chris-cuomo-priority-covid-testing-andrew-cuomo">a rewrite of the same Albany Times-Union story</a> about Gov Cuomo's (allegedly nepotistic) vaccine priorities!</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is a notch more dramatic than a previous case this month, in which one appearance by a newly hired "Fox News analyst" on a Fox talk show also held down the top two positions:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTggJzzq6YF-2bRLAdJamd6vSiFdXcVf_0n31b7kh6rSSy4oGabcIHC-6v-OUT3WtW6wlJERC_XP9z0JIPiXrYJ-aU3l80yeV_YkmMTwDwuIbXvYiYNeQS9op_B4nuYoi1MEi1/s519/fox2.2021.0324.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="519" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTggJzzq6YF-2bRLAdJamd6vSiFdXcVf_0n31b7kh6rSSy4oGabcIHC-6v-OUT3WtW6wlJERC_XP9z0JIPiXrYJ-aU3l80yeV_YkmMTwDwuIbXvYiYNeQS9op_B4nuYoi1MEi1/w400-h398/fox2.2021.0324.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">The visual framing is a bit more distinct here (March 4, if you're scoring along at home). <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mcenany-biden-neanderthal-hillary-clinton-deplorables-mask-mandate">The top story</a> gets to remind the audience of the Main Enemy; <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/mcenany-psaki-performance-circle-back-trump-access">the second story</a> singles out a new one. Through March 5, as it turns out, Jen Psaki had been mentioned in as many Top Five homepage headlines as Mitch McConnell (21 each: two behind AOC but four ahead of Harris*).</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So overall, what do you hear about when you visit the Fox homepage for your news? The most frequent headline words in this data set* are Trump (281), Biden (242), Cuomo (130) and COVID (100). Some frequent phrases? Glad you asked! Here's an edited selection:<br /></span></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Nursing home<span> </span>34</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">Impeachment trial<span> 19</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Super Bowl 18</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Anti-Trump 16</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Left wing 16<br /></span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Cancel culture 13<br /></span></span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Context, as usual, is everything. "Super Bowl" can be the game itself, but also the reaction of various Twitter randos to the halftime show, anything involving Tom Brady's postgame experiences or </span>the uppityness of assorted players and relatives. "Anti-Trump" is often the Lincoln Project but also CNN and other miscreants. There's just no end of potential fun here.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">* For the record, "Seuss" comes up 16 times and "Limbaugh" 15.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">** Data cleanup still pending </span></span><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-20509596730666571552021-03-11T13:47:00.004-05:002021-03-11T13:47:40.771-05:00Guide us to thy perfect light<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwtmNZEW2-ZFM3eDjpBwvlr5SKAk0JOAb8k2hJukhbg9cdmg4psM9AkJwZBSNcjc_xebSRITQi6OuGpehCSTx0szh5mWbmjdkm6UjMTvRzqfc5EhJ1Srq0Wf7iWehKL5UbLpyi/s839/fox.MurdochWorhip.2021.0311.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="199" data-original-width="839" height="95" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwtmNZEW2-ZFM3eDjpBwvlr5SKAk0JOAb8k2hJukhbg9cdmg4psM9AkJwZBSNcjc_xebSRITQi6OuGpehCSTx0szh5mWbmjdkm6UjMTvRzqfc5EhJ1Srq0Wf7iWehKL5UbLpyi/w400-h95/fox.MurdochWorhip.2021.0311.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Came a question a few weeks ago on how the Fair 'n' Balanced Network might compare to the muscular right-wing news empires of the past -- say, Col. Bertie McCormick's Tribune. One point that hadn't stood out was the degree to which McCormick, and perhaps even more so Hearst, lavished space on their own prose and ideas. I'm now tempted to change my mind, based on <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/rupert-murdoch-90-birthday">this epic by one of Fox's pet media writers</a>:</span><p></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Fox Corporation chairman and News Corp executive chairman Rupert Murdoch turns 90 Thursday, <u>but the media mogul hasn’t taken a step back from defending free speech</u>, harnessing key roles in two of the most recognized and influential media companies in the world.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Uh, sure. McCormick, whatever else you might think of him,* was <a href="https://www.rcfp.org/journals/news-media-and-law-winter-2016/near-85-look-back-landmark/">an actual defender of the First Amendment</a>, even when it cloaked characters as slimy as Jay Near. Murdoch's outlets think free speech is fine, as long as it comforts the Trump cult and afflicts working journalists.<br /></span><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />Murdoch recently condemned cancel culture as "awful woke orthodoxy" suppressing free speech around the globe while accepting a lifetime achievement award from the Australia Day Foundation earlier this year. He began by noting that his career is far from over, before slamming a "wave of censorship" plaguing the media industry.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If by "recently" you mean "late January," true. <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/rupert-murdoch-condemns-awful-woke-orthodoxy-suppress-free-speech">Here's the same writer then</a>:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Murdoch made the remarks when accepting a lifetime achievement award from the Australia Day Foundation. <u>He began by noting that his career is far from over, before slamming a "wave of censorship" plaguing the media industry</u>.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You have to admit, it's a lot easier to just copy your own prose. Here's today's third paragraph:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">"A lifetime achievement award does have an air of finality, almost of closure, but I can assure you that there are many goals still to come, and challenges to overcome. Well, I’m far from done," Murdoch said, noting his journey that "began in a smoke-filled Adelaide newsroom" remained in motion.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And January's:<br /></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">"A lifetime achievement award does have an air of finality, almost of closure, but I can assure you that there are many goals still to come, and challenges to overcome. Well, I’m far from done," Murdoch said, noting his journey that "began in a smoke-filled Adelaide newsroom" remained in motion.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Indeed, you won't find much new in today's 65o-word labor of love, except -- and this is truly Hearstian -- <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/03/11/happy-90th-birthday-to-rupert-murdoch-savior-of-the-post/">the paean from another Murdoch shop</a>:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">He expanded to the United States in the early 1970s, adding a plethora** of newspapers – including the New York Post – to his portfolio.<br /><br />"Media mogul Rupert Murdoch turns 90 today, and apart from his family, it’s The New York Post, and New York City, that have the most reason to celebrate the milestone," the Post’s Steve Cuozzo wrote Thursday.<br /><br />"The Big Apple hasn’t been the same since Murdoch bought the paper from Dorothy Schiff in late 1976. <u>The city is immeasurably more self-aware and better-informed than it was when its media were uniformly liberal if not outright left-leaning.</u> It’s also a more fun place to be, thanks to Page Six," Cuozzo added.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You followers of pre-WWII exceptionalism can clear your own throats here. But if you've been wondering, yes: You may add the Heavenly Chorus to the ways in which Murdoch resembles his predecessors.***</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>So happy birthday, boss. Here’s to many more.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">* Plenty.<br /> ** Pro tip: Never use "plethora" unless (a) it's preceded by "veritable" and (b) you are Howard Cosell.<br />*** Three guesses about what the prewar McCormick or Hearst would have thought about being likened to a carpetbagger who received an award from "a nonprofit organization designed to unite the leading figures of the Australian community living in the United Kingdom."</span></span><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-15884783647495228082021-03-07T18:19:00.003-05:002021-03-07T18:21:07.934-05:00America First<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv_VeoguWEXbXJW6ADoRVupFlvACQZsDnm0XQoAxJ6p-rfif6EWnc_FJVNwqQJC2GmrkViiBCuA6ZVAgwowfzoq24l-TKpKfYR9zinERFhyphenhyphenWNHv8N9f4miuq_YW8piN6kuN_uc/s780/fox.3031.0307.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="780" data-original-width="513" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv_VeoguWEXbXJW6ADoRVupFlvACQZsDnm0XQoAxJ6p-rfif6EWnc_FJVNwqQJC2GmrkViiBCuA6ZVAgwowfzoq24l-TKpKfYR9zinERFhyphenhyphenWNHv8N9f4miuq_YW8piN6kuN_uc/w421-h640/fox.3031.0307.png" width="421" /></a></div><p> <span style="font-family: georgia;">In a stunning departure from the past week, in which the top story at your Fair 'n' Balanced homepage has been either Donald Trump, Andrew Cuomo, liberal hypocrisy, Dr. Seuss, Andrew Cuomo, liberal hypocrisy, Donald Trump, mass murderers getting checks from the COVID bill or Andrew Cuomo, Sunday afternoon is all (well, 60%) royal family. And even by Fox standards, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/queen-elizabeth-unity-coronavirus-meghan-markle-prince-harry-interview">the lie at the top of the page</a> -- the queen's "last-minute swipe" -- is rather striking:</span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Queen Elizabeth II stressed the importance of unity and family in a royal address that aired just hours before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's sit-down with Oprah Winfrey is set to air.<br /><br />In a message broadcast on Sunday, Britain's monarch also touched on the role of technology in keeping people connected with friends and family amid the global coronavirus pandemic.<br /><br />Although it came hours before the highly anticipated interview, <u>the queen made no mention of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex or their upcoming interview with Winfrey</u>, which will Sunday evening in the U.S., and on Monday in the U.K.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Needless to say, this isn't the fault of the writer, who was merely rearranging (per standard Fox practice) some words at the top of <a href="https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-pandemics-coronavirus-pandemic-prince-harry-queen-elizabeth-ii-633762d32db2507ba848a1fe3b8a5d8a">an AP story</a>. But rest assured that someone at Fox is working hard to make sure you get the headline you want, regardless of what the pesky text says. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In other royal news, some sources talk about <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/meghan-markle-yelled-at-staff-for-minor-infractions-hyper-specific-demands-report"></a></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOFPtOjY-R5LbMCWgogUVEUuciqD7JF1uV5EWDMyN_Ox1S7rPxTyFOnaLz92YubUkgmo5jVHRg0LBGcAA_I2r8EvRF-9GeDWk5uMPhaVx46jgUb6dYzFqbPFeWBkBnwZ1LNE_v/s187/allbom%252C.2021.0221.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="187" data-original-width="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOFPtOjY-R5LbMCWgogUVEUuciqD7JF1uV5EWDMyN_Ox1S7rPxTyFOnaLz92YubUkgmo5jVHRg0LBGcAA_I2r8EvRF-9GeDWk5uMPhaVx46jgUb6dYzFqbPFeWBkBnwZ1LNE_v/s16000/allbom%252C.2021.0221.png" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">the misery of life at Kensington Palace, <br />and <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/bettheny-frankel-slams-meghan-markle-ahead-of-oprah-winfrey-interview-cry-me-a-river">another reality TV star is using Twitter</a> -- bringing to mind <a href="https://www.freep.com/story/sports/columnists/mitch-albom/2021/02/21/mitch-albom-kim-kardashian-kanye-west-celebrity-obsession-covid-19/4524247001/">one of the less clueful columns of late in the local fishwrap</a>:</span><p></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">The celebrity business has gone cold in this country. It's taken a massive hit from COVID- 19. And no one should feel sorry about that. On the contrary. You could argue it's one of the few good things to emerge from The Year of Coronavirus.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You could, but then you'd be making claims about public opinion without evidence, and here I managed to get through an entire election without a rant about poll coverage. Sigh.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Anyway, to round out the page, we have <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/health/covid-19-pill-preliminary-testing-dr-marc-siegel">Fox promoting Fox personalities</a>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">"This might be the future once the vaccine really gets control over the
pandemic and we just start seeing isolated cases," he said. "By then,
this drug might be ready and this might be the drug for over the next
several months."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">... and <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-murkowski-senate-alaska-campaign-2022">another press release from Dear Leader</a>, which clocks in at eight paragraphs (including "Fox News' inquiry to Murkowski's office was not immediately returned") but required the efforts of two staffers. Quite a day at the glue factory for Fox.<br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-75062822498308251502021-02-22T13:27:00.000-05:002021-02-22T13:27:06.836-05:00You 'kids' and your 'abbreviations'<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCo8UAY36zR-uBTRI-MchKVHKWn3PrMkQ8fmdVK5NrNhNKWy9-jsVO7Tbx_z33qwSnrvJRMG52IxkHY-Y0p9ln8i-m4mmpsKrUj7CbV3AO1EEkhs03394yaKu5F9rpsPaeA6Jt/s146/sfx.1941.1022.Gas2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="64" data-original-width="146" height="88" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCo8UAY36zR-uBTRI-MchKVHKWn3PrMkQ8fmdVK5NrNhNKWy9-jsVO7Tbx_z33qwSnrvJRMG52IxkHY-Y0p9ln8i-m4mmpsKrUj7CbV3AO1EEkhs03394yaKu5F9rpsPaeA6Jt/w200-h88/sfx.1941.1022.Gas2.png" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Before we roll our eyes too hard at Those Kids and What They're Doing To Our Words, it's always fun to dig into the archives -- here, your 1941 San Francisco Examiner -- and see how things looked in the past.</span><p></p><p><span style="clear: right; float: right; font-family: georgia; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="112" data-original-width="128" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyt-AHF3Fpbp9vuVClJd_FTAGpGAwk-JDZW624AmUVdLUoiexQSoB9CXJmgoyCD7E8Mpj7wJhyphenhyphenVWprE0_Fjv2bz9tmkLfxnFgydZkj8eJVwoJFfG40ZWRb7StD7Lfk_W5tvF9M/w200-h175/sfx.1941.1022.MarkQuotes.png" width="200" /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Why is "gas" in quotes in the Oct. 22 business section but quoteless in the news section on the same day? Probably not a fight between desks. The top hed refers to <i>real</i> gas, see -- the kind that's used to run factories. The "gas" in the second hed is that stuff autoists put in their autos. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you used your i'Phone to schedule a time for your 'flu shot, you might not be too surprised at the 'chute escape described below. And, yes, getting in the local university angle is like getting the dog's name -- by the time you're qualified to work for Hearst,* you're expected to know that kind of stuff.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXtiWsmADBU4EycoAZ5byYTjEXllwniFAPlnQDkMszloEmtTkJP0lGOFl_6aQSorzHw0cBwYiQCRTJiPpOHUMC7tjaulXsqEg54TYY8culrGeGU2y6CWOtV_ReIBuzRJbLuVBY/s326/sfx.1941%252C1104.apostrophe.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="132" data-original-width="326" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXtiWsmADBU4EycoAZ5byYTjEXllwniFAPlnQDkMszloEmtTkJP0lGOFl_6aQSorzHw0cBwYiQCRTJiPpOHUMC7tjaulXsqEg54TYY8culrGeGU2y6CWOtV_ReIBuzRJbLuVBY/w400-h163/sfx.1941%252C1104.apostrophe.png" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyt-AHF3Fpbp9vuVClJd_FTAGpGAwk-JDZW624AmUVdLUoiexQSoB9CXJmgoyCD7E8Mpj7wJhyphenhyphenVWprE0_Fjv2bz9tmkLfxnFgydZkj8eJVwoJFfG40ZWRb7StD7Lfk_W5tvF9M/s128/sfx.1941.1022.MarkQuotes.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a></div><br /><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"> * Warren Breed, author of "Social control in the newsroom" (1955) and a former Hearst reporter, described this phenomenon in an interview for a journal article much later: Nobody had to tell you when a story should begin "Bands playing and flags flying...", because you already knew</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-16699454333251008182021-02-04T23:49:00.002-05:002021-02-04T23:49:29.888-05:00Battle for the top<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeSasZPd9h-B3k0my4cVioG2zZUVXocdh2pivH4k1o2MjRJqB_j1WThZqUbpHVrPpVIzqXYI8rONd3RPJe78c7b8CeBIqxSjHyerydIGd_Tsx4LhMBhHSEl3-JVXDr42gGALgE/s289/FoxFrame1.0204.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeSasZPd9h-B3k0my4cVioG2zZUVXocdh2pivH4k1o2MjRJqB_j1WThZqUbpHVrPpVIzqXYI8rONd3RPJe78c7b8CeBIqxSjHyerydIGd_Tsx4LhMBhHSEl3-JVXDr42gGALgE/s0/FoxFrame1.0204.png" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">How do you pick the most Foxalicious story of a fairly ordinary day (Thursday, for example). Where do you even start? </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Could it be <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-under-fire-amid-details-that-she-wasnt-in-capitol-building-during-riots" target="_blank">this classic "under fire" take</a> from around 8:30 a.m.?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is facing criticism over initial claims she made about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, with many noting that she wasn't even in the Capitol when it occurred.</i></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The controversy erupted after the New York congresswoman posted a video in which she described a confrontation with Capitol Police at her office, which is located on the larger Capitol complex. But it is not in the Capitol itself — which includes the dome, the House, and the Senate — and was where many rioters stormed in and were seen breaking windows.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Her office is located in the Cannon building, which is accessible through underground tunnels connected to the Capitol as well as via a short stroll down a walkway and across the street. It was also one of the buildings where staff was told to evacuate after suspicious packages were found in the area. Law enforcement found pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails in the vicinity.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Clearly worth the No. 2 spot of the morning, right?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>... On Wednesday, she faced a wave of backlash. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., also blasted<br /> media coverage, tweeting that insurrectionists never stormed the hallway that she shares with Ocasio-Cortez. The hashtag #AlexandriaOcasioSmollet trended, an apparent comparison to actor Jussie Smollett, who falsely claimed to be the victim of a hate crime.</i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEueX61jf8I4krc4L5CWuc5ycjMwqYjv6_vKxZm63gcFYPXlTspBLkZBB9Y9E5ffgC96upxBK_P_l0y5I-kfX1TzNXQvrGzTHELfp_V-IVaKTlY0S1l4wa1_Hu-HybyB2g2827/s279/fox.2021.0204.ExtraAOCHashtag.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="75" data-original-width="279" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEueX61jf8I4krc4L5CWuc5ycjMwqYjv6_vKxZm63gcFYPXlTspBLkZBB9Y9E5ffgC96upxBK_P_l0y5I-kfX1TzNXQvrGzTHELfp_V-IVaKTlY0S1l4wa1_Hu-HybyB2g2827/s0/fox.2021.0204.ExtraAOCHashtag.PNG" /></a></i></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">To be fair, assorted Fox allies tried to get several hashtags trending, including the misspelled one highlighted downpage the previous evening. But as a Fox reader, you didn't really need the prompt, did you?</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfn5qTJ5lnXn_JdeQrdoggPtfdnLY_uqxIcNjOPy-DBq8oRzts9kIghQkGk4SLbnzo_VJZc1OwhB6oqBt5eomVnmPot9Bwhc2pfgV1gAEXVvdNoeGFFVVc9CfVyMVsL0eT1vCH/s563/FoxFrame2.0204.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="369" data-original-width="563" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfn5qTJ5lnXn_JdeQrdoggPtfdnLY_uqxIcNjOPy-DBq8oRzts9kIghQkGk4SLbnzo_VJZc1OwhB6oqBt5eomVnmPot9Bwhc2pfgV1gAEXVvdNoeGFFVVc9CfVyMVsL0eT1vCH/w400-h263/FoxFrame2.0204.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Or could the day's Foxiest story be the discovery, around 3 p.m., that <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-saudi-led-offensive-operations-yemen">those Endless Wars the previous administration was always ending</a> are a pretty good idea after all?</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>President Biden announced Thursday that the U.S. will end its support for Saudi-led offensive operations in Yemen against Houthi rebels, as part of a new foreign policy outlook by the new administration.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>"This war has to end, and to underscore our commitment we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales," Biden said.</i></span></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Earlier, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan pointed to the stopping of two arms sales of precision-guided munitions that were moving forward under the last administration as an example.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDsRnBtZ8zf-l5zzHr-90JXqiEFnbZkKRDyyfeQV76Fg9xn_TVLaMqn9N5p0dI5MWTpj81zD1KOHE50Y_kImi_cBBXvqf1saCBcvTm8lwDJ-qvA74Ff7k0ZEpQIP40_JvFGf8V/s194/FoxFrame3.0204.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="141" data-original-width="194" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDsRnBtZ8zf-l5zzHr-90JXqiEFnbZkKRDyyfeQV76Fg9xn_TVLaMqn9N5p0dI5MWTpj81zD1KOHE50Y_kImi_cBBXvqf1saCBcvTm8lwDJ-qvA74Ff7k0ZEpQIP40_JvFGf8V/w400-h291/FoxFrame3.0204.png" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Nice, but I'm going with <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sources-say-hunter-biden-likely-paid-big-bucks-for-new-book-deal">the story that broke into the No. 3 spot around 8:30</a>:<br /></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Though the numbers aren’t public, Hunter Biden was likely paid big bucks for his new book deal. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The tale of Hunter Biden’s experience with drug addiction will "likely" earn the president’s son a number in the "high six figures," a book industry source told Fox News. </i></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Fox News has reached out to Simon & Schuster for confirmation. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>...Sources tell the Daily Mail Hunter likely received an advance as high as
$2 million and could earn millions more if he allows his life story to
be filmed. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is actually Fox's <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-memoir-beautiful-things-april-simon-schuster">third story of the day</a> on <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-backs-son-hunters-book-deal">the alleged memoir</a> but the first to omit this crucial sideswipe:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Hunter Biden's book will be published by Simon & Schuster, the same publishing house that dropped Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., from a book deal over Hawley's objection to the certification of electoral votes from Pennsylvania. The protest of the votes led to a pro-Trump mob attacking the U.S. Capitol.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The final effort required the efforts of three Fox staffers (one in the byline, two in the shirttail), Considering that the main point of a Foxclusive like this seems to be getting the commenters riled up -- at this writing, it takes all of five reader comments to get to SOROS!11!!1!!!1!1!!!!!1!!! -- one wonders whether if wouldn't have been easier just to take the wire story and give everybody the evening off.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-49859299329446777142021-01-29T22:08:00.000-05:002021-01-29T22:08:09.835-05:00King to puppet<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6ADTd66uM_g7oB6lmtPea1mxjUwLGtgCTQhhtXLFud527mf2L7wP9qw8Oq0t5aItEj7jBr05ILi2YatZL84aGW63KOFe2OUlBt_w4ZQzT__HhJft2HDND9TTG97fFviSOHBI/s486/foxframe.2021.0129.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="177" data-original-width="486" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz6ADTd66uM_g7oB6lmtPea1mxjUwLGtgCTQhhtXLFud527mf2L7wP9qw8Oq0t5aItEj7jBr05ILi2YatZL84aGW63KOFe2OUlBt_w4ZQzT__HhJft2HDND9TTG97fFviSOHBI/w400-h146/foxframe.2021.0129.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you're not careful, you could spend the entire day writing about the Fair 'n' Balanced Network, but the salmon isn't going to roast itself, so here's a brief look at The Day In Biden on the Fox homepage. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-has-signed-40-executive-orders-and-actions-since-taking-office#">The left-hand tale</a> (both are from the No. 3 position), around 10:30 a.m., suggests that your place on the monarchy-to-republic scale depends largely on who you are:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Biden’s orders have stopped construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border; reversed the ban on transgender individuals serving in the U.S. military; reversed Trump’s travel ban on mostly Muslim countries; rejoined the World Health Organization, after Trump withdrew last year amid the pandemic; rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, after Trump withdrew; restored the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in full, which Trump sought to get rid of; rolled back Trump environmental policies, like scrapping the contract for the Keystone XL Pipeline, and more.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">By 5:30 p.m. or so, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-green-new-dealers-rejoice-over-bidens-climate-plan-its-almost-as-if-we-helped-shape-the-platform">it's clear who's really in charge</a>:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Advocates for the Green New Deal <u>have praised</u> the Biden administration for its early moves to address climate change, taking a victory lap after the president signed a slew of sweeping executive orders targeting the environment.<br /><br />The array of directives that Biden signed include pausing new federal oil leases, rejoining the Paris climate agreement, eliminating lucrative subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, revoking permits for the Keystone XL Pipeline and converting the government's fleet of vehicles to electric power.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Again, if you're scoring along with your J2100 textbook and wondering about that news value of timeliness, the "have praised" is a little puzzling -- since most of the story is based on some two-day-old tweets from the usual suspects, it's hard to see why this couldn't have been ready in time to head off the coronation. But at least we've managed to get AOC on the front again.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The biggest difference between Fox's news side and Fox's commentary side since the Peaceful Transfer of Power, at least to date, seems to be that the news side thinks Biden was elected president. (I'm almost willing to predict that the website is also more likely to break the "fourth wall" -- to lean over and tell you what it really thinks -- over the past week, but that awaits more thorough testing.) Compared with the heavy lifting that both sides are doing for the party, any differences are really quite minor.</span><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-37099485633780304332021-01-25T18:47:00.002-05:002021-01-25T18:47:39.768-05:00I'm not asking you who's on second<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnZktglD3OPLttbIGwuKOI56G__SH3bYuBUf1xPNPvjt2Mm5ZQTT1LaPSUD2ajuvrnjr0tYfrrHkMzK3hMKCYC2XFu04LxWziDRo-Reji9Q6cJwISiQrjR_gbqMyrZrwn_-VZc/s595/fox.first.2020.0125.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="518" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnZktglD3OPLttbIGwuKOI56G__SH3bYuBUf1xPNPvjt2Mm5ZQTT1LaPSUD2ajuvrnjr0tYfrrHkMzK3hMKCYC2XFu04LxWziDRo-Reji9Q6cJwISiQrjR_gbqMyrZrwn_-VZc/w349-h400/fox.first.2020.0125.png" width="349" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">You might be wondering -- since Fox apparently made up its mind fairly early in November that Chavez and Soros and HILLARY!!111!1!1!!1!!1!!! didn't <i>actually conspire</i> to rig the election -- what things look like over on the Fair 'n' Balanced website these days. The short answer is more or less the way they always did. Enjoy, for example, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-saudi-arabia-first-plan-keystone-xl-pipeline-daines">the lead story from last Friday</a>:</span></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., believes President Biden killing the Keystone XL pipeline shows he’s putting "Saudi Arabia first," not American workers.<br /><br />"It looks like he cares more about workers in Saudi Arabia than the workers in America," Daines said on "America's Newsroom." </span></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Classic Fox, in that it's a single-source story of the tedious sort: not an assertion of fact built off one background comment and waiting for confirmation, but one person offering an opinion about policy effects. Even though it took two staffers to assemble, there's none of the comment-policy-countercomment-background from which news is usually built from talk-show appearances. (Though to Fox's credit, it's at least cribbing from its own work here, rather than that of the professional networks.)</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Note also that it's a bit behind the times (that pesky news value of "timeliness") -- the event happened Wednesday, but it's not a lead story until someone puts it into the "foreigners first" perspective for you. Compare that with the Monday lead story:</span></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Americans still waiting on coronavirus relief, including stimulus checks, from the federal government may be surprised to learn that President Biden is reportedly offering $4 billion to Central American countries for development.<br /><br />Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said <u>Saturday</u> that Biden told him the U.S. would send $4 billion to help development in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — nations whose hardships have spawned tides of migration through Mexico toward the United States.</span></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Fox needed four staffers and a boost from the AP to put together this eight-paragraph story (including the obligatory "Fox News' inquiry to the White House was not immediately returned"), and given the number of plates that need to be kept spinning, you can see why:</span></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Biden wants a massive plan that includes $20 billion to accelerate vaccine distribution, a $15-an-hour minimum wage increase, an extension of supplemental unemployment benefits through the end of September, a one-time $1,400 stimulus check, a temporary expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit and $350 billion in new funding for state and local governments.<br /><br />Biden promised that border wall building won't continue under his administration, and critics say his immigration stance encourages Central American migrants to cross the border illegally. Earlier in January, a caravan of thousands of migrants clashed with Guatemalan authorities while continuing to trek toward the U.S. border, according to reports.<br /><br /><u>Former President Donald Trump threatened to cut aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for "doing nothing" about migrant caravans in 2019 after pledging to give them billions in 2018</u>. <u>Months later, Trump announced the aid the was restored after the countries reached immigration agreements with the U.S.</u></span></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">So if you can't tell who's on second, billionswise, it's because <i>who is on first.</i></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Fox, to at least its partial credit, didn't go for what seems to have become known as the Big Lie. Given the state of the numbers, that wasn't a really difficult call -- partly because Fox's stock in trade was always the myriad Little Lies it could spread in favor of its friends and against its enemies. Given the state of demand in the marketplace of ideas, it's hard to see how or why that would change.</span><br /></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-38564874201213862082021-01-07T22:17:00.139-05:002021-01-07T23:20:42.817-05:00How Fox tells the story<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoOl2It1KswNuB_Fh0qna_WoTSB3coq_jM8ikRmoSK7Xea_PeJLmWMif2Wp1yrq5k0OScvdhWCYQ3gHYFPk1BXi_dh1QtyNpHzgT9jrmxKDiOVxmWVGPybKPBJfoauY3XUvMKb/s668/FoxFrame.2021.0107.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="668" data-original-width="385" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoOl2It1KswNuB_Fh0qna_WoTSB3coq_jM8ikRmoSK7Xea_PeJLmWMif2Wp1yrq5k0OScvdhWCYQ3gHYFPk1BXi_dh1QtyNpHzgT9jrmxKDiOVxmWVGPybKPBJfoauY3XUvMKb/w368-h640/FoxFrame.2021.0107.png" width="368" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You could spend a week with the Boy Scout Handbook trying to unravel the knots that the Fair 'n' Balanced Network has tied itself in just over the past 32 hours, so let's content ourselves with looking at a couple of handy Fox storytelling techniques in this presentation from around 6:15 p.m. Thursday. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mcenany-condemns-appalling-violence-capitol-promises-orderly-transition">In the lead story</a>, we have an illustration of the first-day-of-editing-class rule that the best place to look for a headline is the first independent clause of the lede. The Mouth of Sauron gave a briefing to condemn the "appalling, reprehensible" violence, and there we are. Contrast that with <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-capitol-stormed-riotous-mob-domestic-terrorists">the story in the No. 2 position</a>. The hed's entirely true: Biden does indicate that BLM protesters would have been treated differently, but that shows up in the ninth graf, more than halfway into a 710-word story.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you're a Fox reader, of course, "What about unity?" makes perfect sense, because a different theme -- Democrat hypocrisy -- is why the story is on the front page. Unity, or the more general idea of a campaign pledge to be a unifier, doesn't appear anywhere in the story, which spends a lot of time on the 25th Amendment, but unity doesn't have to be mentioned. You don't need to say "Goldstein" to run the Two Minute Hate. And for you doubters, <i>of course</i> it's objective; aren't the first two words "President-elect"? (If you're interested in how news organizations invest a zero-sum resource like time, this story has four contributors: one named in the byline and three in the shirttail.)<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The overall "well, he started it" theme <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/anderson-cooper-pro-trump-rioters-olive-garden">continues with the No. 4 story</a>, because it's never too early to point out that the liberal media hate you and everything you stand for. This one's by a Fox "senior editor," not one of the regular media critics, but it has the formula down. Cite the offending statement:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Look at them, they’re high-fiving each other for this deplorable display of completely unpatriotic, completely against law and order, completely unconstitutional behavior, it’s stunning," he said. "And they’re going to go back, you know, to the Olive Garden and to the Holiday Inn they’re staying at, and the Garden Marriott, and they’re going to have some drinks and they're going to talk about the great day they had in Washington ... They stood up for nothing other than mayhem."</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">... quote a few offended randos on Twitter, and <i>always</i> conclude with a no-comment:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">A spokesperson for Olive Garden did not respond to requests for comment.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But the No. 5 story is the real classic. The top story was a straight-ahead who-what-where off a news conference, but <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/capitol-rioters-prison-trump-executive-order-federal#">this one lets Fox show some initiative</a> on behalf of the Dear Leader (six Fox staffers contribute, with an added credit for The AP, to the 465-word text):</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen vowed that pro-Trump rioters who entered the U.S. Capitol would "face the full consequences of their actions under the law," and those consequences could include being charged under President Trump's executive order authorizing up to 10 years in prison for "injury of federal property."<br /><br />"Our criminal prosecutors have been working throughout the night with special agents and investigators from the U.S. Capitol Police, FBI, ATF, Metropolitan Police Department and the public to gather the evidence, identify perpetrators and charge federal crimes where warranted," Rosen said in a statement on Thursday.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Isn't that exactly what Dear Leader told his cult it would do the day before? </span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">They’ll knock out Lincoln too, by the way. They’ve been taking his statue down, but then we signed a little law. You hurt our monuments, you hurt our heroes, you go to jail for 10 years and everything stopped. Did you notice that? It stopped. It all stopped.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There is a slight problem if you hang on for the sixth graf:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">... Rosen did not reference the executive order, which Trump signed in June after protesters targeted historic monuments and statues in the wake of George Floyd's death.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Oh. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now, the lede doesn't technically credit Rosen with the line about the executive order; that's in a separate independent clause. But news writing has a bad habit of dropping a comma in where it wants to mark another complementized clause (blame the craftwide belief that "that" is invariably a Needless Word), so it's genuinely hard to pin down on the first go. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">One could go on, but Fox is busy doing more stuff.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> </span><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-56168939159068377942021-01-01T10:06:00.000-05:002021-01-01T10:06:05.962-05:00Today in ledes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiChIwQ6r2-1P0-DL1Ju7W-a5ndKQXA6ps_7cDSfMZuRsHkcTt6zd90tRkXLh-UFDmtoPz5EcN_GhKRbdj00i0R47saZvMUKsOkXm8tsCQwP8oSiMc8MgsGM4S1byi_HsCtK7E-/s791/nydn.lede.1941.0101.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="429" data-original-width="791" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiChIwQ6r2-1P0-DL1Ju7W-a5ndKQXA6ps_7cDSfMZuRsHkcTt6zd90tRkXLh-UFDmtoPz5EcN_GhKRbdj00i0R47saZvMUKsOkXm8tsCQwP8oSiMc8MgsGM4S1byi_HsCtK7E-/w400-h217/nydn.lede.1941.0101.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ledes were different in the old days:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Globular little Howard C. Hopson, once the high-pressure head of the billion-dollar Associated Gas & Electric System and now, at 58, a neurotic hypochondriac, was convicted yesterday of grubbing $20,000,000 from the pockets of his company's 7000,000 shareholders.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">New York Daily News, Jan. 1, 1941</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i> </i> <br /></span></p><p></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-60182786878393266512020-11-17T13:18:00.000-05:002020-11-17T13:18:27.067-05:00Another fabricated Fox story<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgHHlL1_vpvbomGxBb61fN7xY2M5FEw1cnkVRVCSo-cz05_6he45kxB-J4UoYxAp_E3-4CMcu284D3_J_YHkQPej4cZjn1vV4ZSO6mfi5pMWRRbc2Z1TDtk_aFcKHbbOvjGI4j/s515/fox.lede.2020.1117.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="357" data-original-width="515" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgHHlL1_vpvbomGxBb61fN7xY2M5FEw1cnkVRVCSo-cz05_6he45kxB-J4UoYxAp_E3-4CMcu284D3_J_YHkQPej4cZjn1vV4ZSO6mfi5pMWRRbc2Z1TDtk_aFcKHbbOvjGI4j/w400-h278/fox.lede.2020.1117.png" width="400" /></a></div><p> <span style="font-family: georgia;">You almost -- maybe, for a moment -- want to feel a twinge of sympathy for the Fair 'n' Balanced Network. The cult of the orange monkey-god has taken up the chant of "<a href="https://www.newsweek.com/pro-trump-million-maga-march-protesters-chant-fox-news-sucks-after-network-calls-election-biden-1547527">Fox News Sucks</a>," but aside from its daring decision to call the enemy candidate the "president-elect," Fox hasn't changed a thing about story selection, sourcing, framing or (ahem, you know) out-and-out fabrication from its days as the president's tame pet.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/californians-georgia-help-democrats-senate-races">Tuesday morning's lead story</a> is a fine example. We're promised at the top of the homepage that "'unprecedented' droves" of Californians are planning some kind of "blitz," apparently involving "change of residences," in hopes of tilting the two Senate runoffs in Stalin's direction -- hence the "stern legal warning." On the story itself, the hed is softer, but the deck less ambiguous, blitzwise:<br /><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB9MiyHnLEVSpbcONWa19RrSWmweRTy0j0k9Z8h-WJtb_DnVgUau4n5I8m18JrBTLj0ET4nqf2idXy3LpJINqF_4f-sDUKzq8MXOUyFmvlUzZBiRsXc5UYngWcDzJo3H3_9JvW/s863/fox.hed2.2020.1117.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="211" data-original-width="863" height="98" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB9MiyHnLEVSpbcONWa19RrSWmweRTy0j0k9Z8h-WJtb_DnVgUau4n5I8m18JrBTLj0ET4nqf2idXy3LpJINqF_4f-sDUKzq8MXOUyFmvlUzZBiRsXc5UYngWcDzJo3H3_9JvW/w400-h98/fox.hed2.2020.1117.png" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">The general rules of headline writing suggest that somewhere in the text, that "vast number" and their intent will be spelled out. The lede is often considered a good place to start looking:</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>A host of California residents and California-based political organizations are prepared to descend on Georgia to campaign for two Democratic U.S. Senate candidates whose victory would have profound implications for the direction of the country.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Well, that's a bit of a disappointment on the election-fraud front (though we do find out who's doing the actual reporting around here). Maybe they're hiding in the second graf!<br /><i><br />The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Democrats in the Golden State have been hounding political organizers with questions about how they can travel to Georgia to volunteer for Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock. </i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">No, not there either. Let's skip some background information and see if we can catch those details by surprise:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>... The runoff election has fired up Democrats from out of state. According to campaign finance data, more than 83% of funds for Ossof’s* campaign came from outside Georgia, as did nearly 80% of funds for Warnock’s fall campaign.<br /><br />Flip the West, a California-based organization “dedicated to harnessing grassroots power to help Democrats take back the U.S. Senate, has filled up more than 7,500 phone bank shifts for making calls to Georgia, according to the Chronicle. Additionally, more than 16,000 volunteers have signed up to send postcards to Georgia voters reminding them to vote in the runoff election. </i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Still sounds pretty remote, doesn't it? Surely there must be something!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>... Others are prepared to physically travel to Georgia. Manny Yekutiel, a political activist who owns a civic engagement space in San Francisco’s Mission District, said he has been bombarded with calls asking him: “When do I move to Georgia? Where can I stay? Should I get a block of hotel rooms?”</i><br /><br />Fox is bending the rules, not breaking them. It would be courteous to point out that <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Californians-prepare-to-descend-on-Georgia-to-15728312.php">this quote too was lifted from a professional news organization</a>, but the nod in the second graf kinda-sorta spreads its magic glitter over the subsequent borrowings (which, again, are from a standard if well detailed report on campaign volunteering). From here on out, though, it's all Fox:<br /></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Among the most high-profile people who said they were moving to Georgia just to vote in the election is former Democratic Presidential nominee Andrew Yang. </span></i></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">“Great news #yanggang – Evenlyn** and I are moving to Georgia to help @ossoff and @ReverendWarnock win!” Yang tweeted earlier this month. “This is our only chance to clear Mitch out of the way and help Joe and Kamala get things done in the next 4 years.”<br /><br />The vast number of people who said they were willing to move to Georgia just so they can vote in the runoff election has prompted state officials to push back on the idea. </span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Yang's tweet, needless to say, doesn't say anything about voting intent, nor is there any support for the "vast number" who plan to follow him -- not even in <a href="https://foxwilmington.com/politics/senate-runoffs-georgia-officials-warn-people-not-to-move-to-state-just-to-vote/">this three-day-old article by one of the Fox staffers credited with contributing</a>:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system manager, said during a Thursday press conference that there has been “discussion about people coming in from out of state” to “help Georgia,” naming 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang as “the most famous” example.</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So with the droves and blitzes vanishing into the mist, how's that stern legal warning (from last Thursday) holding up? Back to our top story:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s voting system manager, cautioned during a press conference last week that doing so would violate state law.<br /><br />“In order to be able to register to vote in Georgia, you have to be a Georgia resident,” he said. “That means you have to believe you are staying in Georgia.”<br /><br />Those who try to vote in Georgia while merely visiting the state may face felony charges punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.”</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I suppose it's a sign of Our Times that Fox needed three staffers (one with the byline, two in the shirttail) to spin somebody else's reporting, some preemptive YANKEES ARE MESSING WITH OUR WAY OF LIFE! squeals from Georgia, and a vague celebrity tweet into a scare story worth the top of the page. You'd like to think a lone reporter from the Hearst or McCormick glory days could knock the whole thing out before lunch.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">* Nor has Fox tinkered with its legendary attention to detail.<br />** Sigh.</span></span><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10642785.post-90694151383977441512020-10-29T22:43:00.000-04:002020-10-29T22:43:10.778-04:00Fear 'n' balanced on the campaign trail<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhya_ud_9RfK_0qttuvzslDthgAzL_3N4FqZ7VZDygJzU28Z74md_CREPCySZl91JIplOb5BWlMOK4zf2_ne48MiV9kAPGicWW994AinPku_p_kUO1AKPL8OwWVR1vVwjASH1y6/s333/fox.MondayInitial.2020.1026.1020a.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="223" data-original-width="333" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhya_ud_9RfK_0qttuvzslDthgAzL_3N4FqZ7VZDygJzU28Z74md_CREPCySZl91JIplOb5BWlMOK4zf2_ne48MiV9kAPGicWW994AinPku_p_kUO1AKPL8OwWVR1vVwjASH1y6/w400-h268/fox.MondayInitial.2020.1026.1020a.png" width="400" /></a></div> <span style="font-family: georgia;">Looks like we have a campaign reporting trend here at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network -- or at least, with two occurrences in three days, the end of the beginning of a trend. It works like this: First (Monday morning, above), proclaim that the old guy with the mask is staying home for the day (a <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/documents-allegedly-show-hunter-biden-signed-off-on-laptop-repairs" target="_blank">favorite</a> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/why-biden-stays-quiet-as-trump-slams-lesley-stahl-and-other-targets" target="_blank">theme</a> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-campaign-limited-tim-graham" target="_blank">of late</a>) while <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-biden-harris-pence-campaign-trail-october-26" target="_blank">your own energetic hero is burning up the old campaign trail</a>:</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The November election is just about one week away, but Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is in Delaware with no campaign events scheduled on Monday, even as President Trump heads to Pennsylvania looking to erase his opponent's lead. </i><br /><br />And in case you didn't get the point:</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> ... The Trump campaign has frequently taken aim at Biden for his lack of campaign events -- Trump has dubbed his Democratic opponent "basement Joe" -- and reiterated that criticism on Monday. <br /><br />"No events for Joe Biden today???" Jason Miller, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign, tweeted. "He's lid crazy!" (Calling a lid refers to a candidate or campaign indicating to the press that they will not hold any more events, typically for the remainder of day). </span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Well, what do you do when the cunning old socialist sneaks out and actually takes questions? Here's Monday evening's No. 3 story, at right (the image on the left is there to help you compare a <i>really </i>serious Twisted Scheme with <a href="https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/10/27/donald-trump-lansing-michigan-rally-today-2020-airport-campaign-mi/6049014002/" target="_blank">the one involving that ungrateful woman in neighboring Michigan</a>). First, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-takes-questions-from-reporters-at-rare-presser-faces-none-about-growing-hunter-biden-controversy" target="_blank">pretend your previous story never happened</a>:<br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf5pReqnGdD8CF4iOcuBx3N52IZKfsphZU2SB9DnTShtCoR5GCBMhnzuHMigMpJ-m9LWSmYYzxOkBFdkKmWsIViD_jLaNfqw7IYR8Fl5S0EOBJ9O4Lyvnm7GAbZ26PJb-QDVtw/s461/fox.MondayFolo.2020.1026.0635p.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="186" data-original-width="461" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf5pReqnGdD8CF4iOcuBx3N52IZKfsphZU2SB9DnTShtCoR5GCBMhnzuHMigMpJ-m9LWSmYYzxOkBFdkKmWsIViD_jLaNfqw7IYR8Fl5S0EOBJ9O4Lyvnm7GAbZ26PJb-QDVtw/w400-h161/fox.MondayFolo.2020.1026.0635p.PNG" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Reporters were given a rare opportunity to ask Joe Biden questions during his campaign stop on Monday afternoon in Chester, Pa. </i></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Then recite the questions, but don't mention the answers (as in literally, nowhere in the story):</span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's what reporters asked:<br /><br />"You've kept a relatively light public schedule in the past few days, can you give us a sense of how much you'll be traveling in the next few days?" <br /><br />"Are you confident enough with your standing in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan? Are you expanding the map by traveling to Iowa?"<br /><br />"You said as part of your commission you would look into how long justices serve on the court. Does that mean you're open to term limits?"</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Considering how <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/joe-biden-supreme-court-packing-not-a-fan" target="_blank">whiny</a> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/debate-biden-supreme-court-question-answer-senate-tom-cotton" target="_blank">Fox</a> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-debate-dodge-supreme-court-trump" target="_blank">gets</a> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-voters-deserve-packing-supreme-court" target="_blank">when</a> <a href="https://radio.foxnews.com/2020/10/12/kayleigh-mcenany-ludicrous-that-joe-biden-thinks-voters-dont-deserve-court-packing-answer/" target="_blank">Old Mask Guy</a> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/joe-biden-packing-supreme-court-democrats-marco-rubio" target="_blank">doesn't discuss</a> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-stonewalling-supreme-court-carrie-severino" target="_blank">the Supreme Court</a>, you'd think the answers might be of some ... but no, that's not going to get you that coveted spot on the Fox media desk, is it? Anyway, on to Wednesday morning:<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1-aM_5Xyj6jg_mko8oORo1HJU-xUXtpLnLaFHQms3eA0_Eoc3sP0xHB1sdcUhhtFZ7BY1QQhrxZETDA8uQhsdSNL1wiQPRuJG3BVgH88S5QupFdYk-PPSSkb4dEDuR_vwzSQ-/s390/fox.WednesdayInitial.2020.1028.1045a.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="332" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1-aM_5Xyj6jg_mko8oORo1HJU-xUXtpLnLaFHQms3eA0_Eoc3sP0xHB1sdcUhhtFZ7BY1QQhrxZETDA8uQhsdSNL1wiQPRuJG3BVgH88S5QupFdYk-PPSSkb4dEDuR_vwzSQ-/w340-h400/fox.WednesdayInitial.2020.1028.1045a.png" width="340" /></a></div>The Tucker Carlson interview accounts for the top two stories (hitting both themes above, with the subject of the clusterfestivities promoted to "whistleblower"), but <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-biden-presidential-campaign-election-october-28" target="_blank">there in the No. 3 position</a>:<br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><i>President Trump will hold two campaign rallies in the battleground state of Arizona on Wednesday as his Democratic rival Joe Biden, back in his home state of Delaware, hears a briefing from public health officials on the coronavirus pandemic with just six days left until the election. <br /><br />... Biden's campaign pledged last week that he was "going to campaign aggressively" in the final 11 days before the election, but since the second and final debate on Thursday night, the candidate has ventured out of Delaware just a handful of times. On Saturday and Monday, he campaigned in Pennsylvania, and on Tuesday, Biden traveled to Georgia.<br /><br />... The Trump campaign has frequently taken aim at Biden for his lack of campaign events — Trump has dubbed his Democratic opponent "basement Joe" — and reiterated that criticism Monday.* <br /><br />“He doesn’t leave his basement,” the president told reporters on Monday. “He’s a pathetic candidate.”</i></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjG46K6J-6R-TNtmkUazsPR6PDCTHg4j43l033g7PTe-yXGBJJCWVbzZDBGIuRO2q1D5NeK5tDp4vimP62tYe5_pNj9c_k86HlfQEBBQyGBZJQrbYD-1h0cEbo-GNmCS5QuG8u/s239/fox.WednesdayFolo.2020.1028.0445p.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="173" data-original-width="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjG46K6J-6R-TNtmkUazsPR6PDCTHg4j43l033g7PTe-yXGBJJCWVbzZDBGIuRO2q1D5NeK5tDp4vimP62tYe5_pNj9c_k86HlfQEBBQyGBZJQrbYD-1h0cEbo-GNmCS5QuG8u/s0/fox.WednesdayFolo.2020.1028.0445p.png" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">But wait! The candidate shows up on schedule, so it must be time for more questions (Wednesday afternoon):</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Joe Biden took questions from reporters on Wednesday for the first time since Tucker Carlson’s interview with Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter Biden who said the Biden family dismissed concerns that the Democratic nominee's alleged ties to his son's business deals could put a presidential campaign at risk.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>But the media members on hand didn’t bother to ask about it. <br /><br />... Reporters ignored the bombshell allegations, instead asking the Democratic presidential nominee about ongoing looting and unrest in Philadelphia and the Affordable Care Act before he hurried off into a waiting black SUV. </i><br /> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Three paragraphs of reaction from the Trump campaign, then the lead reporter (another three are listed in the shirttail) takes stage again with some shock and damn:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>There has been a near blackout of coverage of Bobulinski’s shocking claims. <br /><br />Bobulinski’s comments to Carlson were completely ignored by CNN and MSNBC through noon ET, roughly 16 hours after the start of the damning interview. <br /><br />The New York Times and Washington Post didn’t cover the allegations in Wednesday’s paper, either. </i><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Again, if you're waiting to hear what Old Mask Guy would say about, oh, urban unrest or health care, you've come to the wrong story.<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> The fun comes to an end, after a fashion, with <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/jim-biden-refuses-to-answer-questions-family-business-dealings" target="_blank">the Wednesday night lead story</a>:</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoBAjwBMLftKI1EWmlLHcswLA1eq05_1-qhNm4AF7sdq3OrJPkhjRsn1i9xupnjNJTfmbbW92Hzz7SkNUo7ipDn5Uus-P8ZV5IhOn9WhXQZvx7ARRQWH6j5hXRYhTXrORN2ABm/s501/fox.WednesdayNight.2020.1028.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="269" data-original-width="501" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoBAjwBMLftKI1EWmlLHcswLA1eq05_1-qhNm4AF7sdq3OrJPkhjRsn1i9xupnjNJTfmbbW92Hzz7SkNUo7ipDn5Uus-P8ZV5IhOn9WhXQZvx7ARRQWH6j5hXRYhTXrORN2ABm/w400-h215/fox.WednesdayNight.2020.1028.png" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>EXCLUSIVE: Jim Biden, the brother of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, refused to answer questions Wednesday when approached by Fox News outside a house in Maryland about claims the former vice president had knowledge about the family’s overseas business ventures.<br /><br />Approached at a residence on the Eastern Shore, Jim Biden repeatedly rebuffed questions in his driveway as Fox News asked questions from a distance in the street.<br /><br />“I don’t want to comment about anything,” Jim Biden said.<br /><br />Asked if he cared to answer questions, Biden said: “Nope.”<br /><br />Two sources confirmed the person was Jim Biden, including a neighbor who viewed a picture of the footage. The Eastern Shore house is linked to Jim Biden in public records.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Plumb makes you want to climb the fire escape, crawl through the widow's window and steal some photos off the nightstand, doesn't it?<i> </i></span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Fox is only tenuously a news outlet on its best days.** It gets by because of a familiar programming flaw in journalism. The first step in the selection-and-salience framing process is problem definition:*** when you can specify the good guys, the bad guys and the core issue at hand, the actors move to your narrative. Your rival networks might think the candidate is answering a question that came up at a debate, but that's not your story -- the performance of the craven lapdog media is what your audience came for, and ain't that a big enough majority in any town?<br /></span></p><br /><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">* Have a drink on us if you used the ATEX save-get function regularly. Yes, same reporter as the first Monday story.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">** Obligatory nod here to Fox's staff reporting of its own public opinion polling. Fox lies like a rug about other people's polls, but it's scrupulously calm and straightforward with its own, and it never says "outside the margin of error" unless a difference is at least twice the margin of error.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">*** This is sort of the basic Robert Entman (1991, 1993) definition. If you want to start a framing fight, let's wait until after the election. I have grading to do.</span></span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0