Category: Media Beat column

Former readers of Mad Magazine can remember a regular feature called “Scenes We’d Like to See.” It showed what might happen if candor replaced customary euphemisms and evasions. These days, what media scenes would we like to see? One aspect of news media that needs a different paradigm is the correction ritual. Newspapers are sometimes…

It was a chilling moment on a split-screen of history. While the Senate debated the Iraq war on Tuesday night, a long-dead senator again renounced a chronic lie about congressional options and presidential power.The Senate was in the final hours of another failure to impede the momentum of war. As the New York Times was…

Many of America’s most prominent journalists want us to forget what they were saying and writing more than four years ago to boost the invasion of Iraq. Now, they tiptoe around their own roles in hyping the war and banishing dissent to the media margins. The media watch group FAIR (where I’m an associate) has…

This week’s cave-in on Capitol Hill — supplying a huge new jolt of funds for the horrific war effort in Iraq — is surprising only to those who haven’t grasped our current circumstances. Public opinion polls aren’t the same as political leverage. The Vietnam War went on for years after polling showed that most Americans…

Predictably, some critics have decried the current efforts by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. to buy the Dow Jones company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal. But let’s imagine the dynamics that might emerge if Murdoch gains control of that newspaper. Like viewers of his Fox News Channel, readers of The Wall Street Journal under Murdoch…