One man running for president has suffered the most unrelentingly negative treatment of all, the study found: Barack Obama. Though covered largely as president rather than a candidate, negative assessments of Obama have outweighed positive by a ratio of almost 4-1. Those assessments of the president have also been substantially more negative than positive every one of the 23 weeks studied. And in no week during these five months was more than 10% of the coverage about the president positive in tone.
In stark contrast, coverage of Republican presidential candidates, many of whom are far-right-wing extremists or just plain nuts, was mostly "neutral" or "net positive," with theocrat/village idiot Rick Perry in particular receiving fawning coverage (+12 points) from the corporate hack media (followed by "drill baby drill" Sarah Palin, who had a net positive coverage of +9 points, and crazy eyes Michele Bachmann at +8 points).
The only Republican candidates receiving significantly net negative coverage by the corporate hack media were media-basher (a coincidence?) Newt Gingrich (-20 points) and former candidate/loser Tim Pawlenty (-18 points). Herman Cain, who denies climate science, "jokes" about building an electrified fence that would KILL Mexican migrants trying to enter the country, says that liberals actively want to destroy America, etc., gets a +5 positive media coverage rating. In other words, the media thinks it's fine if you say absolutely insane, ignorant, or hateful things, as long as you're a right winger. Would a "liberal media" do this? Of course not. After this study, can anyone possibly believe in the myth of a "liberal media?" Nope. Am I asking rhetorical questions in order to mock Mitt Romney? Yes, in fact I am. :)
As more Americans begin to raise their Constitutionally protected speech in protest of the class warfare waged against them, all manner of freepers and wingers mount a heightened and extreme reaction. Perhaps none is so over-the-top (and despicable) as the ranting of Glenn Beck. By telling his minions the slanderous fiction that "They will come for you and they will drag you in the streets and kill you," Beck clearly tries to incite his minions to violent reaction against fictitious threat.
Fortunately, progressive pundits are rebutting the mischaracterizations. Rachel Maddow is rightfully outraged by the media and wrong-wing mis-characterization of the protestors. Jon Stewart has been at his best as he has skewered the hysterical reaction by the hard-"right" to Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Perhaps not coincidentally, the show's next-day reruns on Comedy Central throughout the day have disappeared. Is this Sumner Redstone's revenge? (You either have to watch at 11 PM or DVR it.) Paul Krugman begin his recent column as follows:
"It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America's direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent. And this reaction tells you something important - namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called "economic royalists," not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.
Reporting means more than just uncritically repeating a candidate's talking points and calling it a day. It requires judging what politicians say by the only appropriate standard of journalism, the truth.
By this standard, the Washington Post's coverage of Romney's trite militaristic speech the other day fell miserably short.
First of all, can someone please tell me exactly what a "muscular" foreign policy is? Does it mean we invade other countries at will, even say, when it costs us a trillion dollars with no benefit?
Was Hitler "muscular"? Is it a good thing to be? I guess it must be, since its apparent opposite, a "flaccid" policy, doesn't sound too great.
"Muscular", in this context, is an utterly meaningless adjective used simply to make warmongers like Romney sound cooler and sexier. It is in short, a marketing term -- not a journalistic one.
Beyond such phony packaging, the Post story failed to challenge Romney's muscular manhandling of the facts on at least 4 key points.
Over at The Green Miles, my fellow progressive, Virginia (and environmental) blogger Miles Grant explains how the Post stole his story about how global warming might bring armadillos to Virginia. Miles points out that just 2 days after he published his piece, "the Washington Post's Post Local did the exact same story." Without any attribution or credit, of course. Why "of course?" Because the Washington Kaplan Post does this all the time. For instance:
*As Miles points out, "Just last month, the Post-owned Fairfax Times stole a quote from ArlNow.com without attribution."
*On July 20, I broke the story on Barbara Favola receiving a $2,500 donation from Advanced Towing, then voting 5 days later to give the Arlington towing industry (including Advanced Towing) $250k more per year. A day later, the Kaplan Post ran with the story, but without any credit or attribution of any kind to Blue Virginia, which was tipped off about the story, then researched it and wrote it up (aka, "broke the story").
*It happened again today with this Post story, about Keith Fimian starting a PAC to help the Virginia GOP. The only problem? Again, Blue Virginia broke that story, this time back in July -- over two months ago. So, did we get any credit from the Kaplan Post for this? Hahahahaha, you must be kidding -- this is the for-profit "education"/corporate hack/desperate-to-stay-in-business-at-any-cost/Kaplan Post we're talking about. C'mon!
*This isn't just a recent phenomenon. Check out this 2006 Media Bistro story, in which "A story in Saturday's paper on mass firings at the Corcoran Gallery of Art failed to credit the influential blog where the news first broke."
*It's not just blogs, either; check out this story, in which "the Washington Post issued a rare apology for publishing two stories last month that included 'substantial material that was borrowed and duplicated, without attribution, from The Arizona Republic newspaper. '"
*Also, check this out (h/t to a commenter on TheGreenMiles).
I've written to the Post ombudsman about this multiple times over the past few months, and he's said he would look into it. So far, though, I'm not seeing any improvement in the Post's behavior. In fact, based on the fact that they just stole two Virginia bloggers' stories in the span of 24 hours, it appears that they're actually getting worse! Amazing.
In early January, at a closed-door retreat for the GOP caucus in Baltimore, Cantor gave a speech trying to reframe the debt ceiling as "a leverage moment" over Obama. "I made the point that, look, this is an opportunity for us because we are in essence a blocking minority in Washington," he told me.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) at a Capitol Hill news conference:
"I think at this point Washington has become so dysfunctional that we've got to start focusing on the incremental progress we can make," Cantor said.
The New York piece by Jason Zengerle is worth reading in its entirety to get a complete sense of how full of himself Rep. Cantor really is (and how he surrounds himself with sycophants who remind him if he ever forgets). But these quotes are as much of an indictment of the Beltway media as of Cantor himself. Why NOT talk out of one side of your mouth to your base & another to sound reasonable to the general public as long as the media refuses to point that out? All we get is, "Obama says one thing, Cantor says another, who can say who's reasonable? We'll have to leave it there."
This is an interesting speech, very similar to what I interviewed Annabel Park's partner Eric Byler about in 2007 for the book, "Netroots Rising." Key points by Annabel:
*The internet, along with social media tools like smart phones, inexpensive video cameras, etc. are a democratizing force
*De facto, this makes all of us reporters.
*This allows all of us to "report on the truth," not just rely on the corporate media.
*This is the way towards a "paradigm shift" for "real political change," to "people power" from "corporate power," from "profit-driven media" to "truth-driven media."
*According to Annabel, we all need to say, "I'm the one that I can trust to tell this story."
Which brings us to blogs like ours here at Blue Virginia, a community blog where you are free and encouraged - within our posting guidelines, of course (see the "About" section on the right side of this page) - to post your reports, to tell the truth, to stand up to lies, corporate power, and "the same old manufactured reality that we're seeing on television and produced by profit-driven corporate media." Unless, as Annabel points out, "we do something about it." I couldn't agree more.
A paper came out a couple of months ago questioning climate science. It quickly became the great shining hope of the climate science denial crowd. An actual scientific paper! Accepted by an actual scientific editor! And published in an actual scientific journal!
But a review of the paper by Roy Spencer and William Braswell published in Remote Sensing is dashing the hopes of climate deniers on the rocks of reality:
The paper itself? "Fundamentally flawed" and contains "false claims."
The editor? Apologized for accepting the paper and resigned.
The question has become, how many scandals will it take for the media to apply any degree of skepticism to what climate science deniers say? Deniers hype "Climategate" - independent investigation finds no wrongdoing. Deniers attack Michael Mann - independent investigation vindicates Mann. Deniers tout work of Edward Wegman - independent investigation finds Wegman's work riddled with plagiarism & inaccuracies.
Instead, the media breathlessly hypes whatever lies the deniers push, but barely mentions the independent investigations that reveal the truth. And the scientific consensus on climate change remains as inconvenient as ever - Earth is warming, man-made carbon pollution is to blame, and we're running out of time make the transition to clean energy as climate disasters multiply.
Is the death spiral facing the Washington Post -- in which the newspaper itself is losing circulation and advertising, forcing the company to rely more heavily on the for-profit education industry (hence the nickname "Kaplan Post") -- accelerating? Based on this story, it sure looks like it.
ARLnow.com is hearing that Christy Goodman, the Washington Post's Arlington/Alexandria reporter, is no longer with the paper as of today.
That news comes as Washington Post employees are reporting on Twitter that the Post may be planning to shutter all of its Virginia and Maryland local bureaus, with the exception of Richmond and Annapolis. The Post currently has local bureaus in Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun County, Prince William County and elsewhere.
True, they're keeping their Richmond bureau open, but what do the other closures mean for the Post's coverage of northern Virginia? And, if there is a vacuum, who will fill it? The Patch websites? Online "newspapers" like ArlNow? Blogs? Other? None of the above? And, most importantly, will we be better or worse informed citizens as the "dead tree" newspaper model continues to decline? I mean, as infuriating and inconsistent as the corporate Post can be, it's still a lot better than most blogs (certainly the right-wing ones -- my god, have you read those things recently?!?), let alone the idiot box (appropriately nicknamed) or the far-right-wing whatever-they-are's (I'm not sure they qualify as real newspapers, as they're basically propaganda rags funded by wealthy right wingnuts, and not much more) Moonie Times, Washington Examiner, and local right-wing real estate rag? I don't know about you, but this situation doesn't exactly give me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.
On climate change, the Washington Post has a Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde problem. On the news side of the house, the paper often does a fine job separating facts from fiction. But this good work is sadly invalidated in the Op-Ed section, where the Post pays columnists to promote the dishonest propaganda of climate denial.
The News and Opinions sections are supposed to operate independently, of course, but the purpose of that tradition is to keep the news from being unduly influenced by the editorial stance of the media outlet. There should be some influence, however, going the other way -- namely, you would hope that opinions spread by the paper have some basis, however shaky, in the facts about which the news section is tasked to report. A newspaper that reports the truth in one section and lies in another may well do more harm than good.
Recent examples of the good WaPo include the superb cover story by Joel Achenbach and Juliette Eilperin that in no uncertain terms put many climate denial myths to rest. Eilperin, one of the best environmental reporters in the business, has been the MVP as the Post, over the years, has steadily moved climate change stories from page 15 or so to the front. She's done a good enough job to become a target of the Koch-funded climate conspiracy crowd.
Another nice job was done recently by Fact Checker Glenn Kessler in demonstrating the phoniness of climate denialism when Rick Perry made his ignorant claims about the scientific consensus supposedly going against climate change.
Ah, but while one hand gives us solid, research-based facts, the other hand takes them away. It's bad enough that the Post supports the "too big to fire" right-winger George Will in his distortion of climate science findings. But now, unbelievably, they've doubled down on that bad investment by adding another climate denier to the Opinions staff, one obscure right-wing blogger named Norman Leahy.
Usually if something that claims to be a news outlet uses a public figure's image in its advertising, it's in the context of a newsworthy event to prove the strength of its coverage. An inauguration, tear down this wall, etc. But the Washington Examiner is simply using a head shot of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann on its banner ads. If you didn't look closely, you'd be excused for thinking it was a TV show & Bachmann was its host:
While progressives still fret about the Washington Times, long DC's biggest GOP cheerleader, they've mostly overlooked the rise to prominence of the Examiner:
Washington Times: 28,329 Washington Examiner: 282,548
The difference? While the Times still charges a small subscription fee, the Examiner isn't just available for free - it pays workers to hand it to commuters at Metro stops. The Examiner's ultra conservative owner doesn't care about making a profit - Philip Anschutz is the 33rd-wealthiest person in America.
So here's my question: Why isn't it considered a political contribution for a Republican financier to underwrite a GOP newsletter handed out at Metro stations?
He acknowledges being part of the problem, which became very clear to him when he vacationed at his childhood home on a farm in Yamhill Oregon, and as he visits old friends he writes
I can't help feeling that national politicians and national journalists alike have dropped the ball on jobs. Some 25 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed - that's more than 16 percent of the work force - but jobs haven't been nearly high enough on the national agenda.
After acknowledging his own culpability, choosing to ask the President a "gotcha" question when he could have asked about this national problem, Kristof writes
A study by National Journal in May found something similar: newspaper articles about "unemployment" apparently fell over the last two years, while references to the "deficit" soared.
Yet despite that, poll after poll makes it clear that Americans by around a 2-1 margin are more concerned about jobs and unemployment than they are the deficit.
House Speaker John Boehner claimed last night if President Obama simply signed the House legislation he has introduced, which would raise the debt ceiling in two stages, the "crisis" atmosphere over the nation's credit rating would simply disappear.
However, CNN reports that Boehner's debt plan would actually not meet the threshold of ratings agencies to avoid a downgrade of the naton's debt while Sen. Harry Reid's debt plan would would preserve the country's AAA credit rating.
If the Boehner plan wouldn't stop a downgrade of America's credit & the hit to our economy that goes along with it, while Reid's would preserve America's pristine AAA credit rating, why is WashingtonPost.com calling them "similar plans"? The Beltway media might as well wave the white flag on covering the Tea Party-manufactured debt ceiling crisis. Just post the competing press releases with a note that says, "We give up. You try to figure out what's true."
Let's just hope that the scandals enveloping Rupert Murdoch and Company will ultimately bring down Faux "News," aka "Mouthpiece of Big Oil and Big Coal" (not mention "Mouthpiece of the Republican Party"). Just on the climate science issue alone, Rupert Murdoch et al deserve whatever happens to them, as well as our schadenfreude at watching it happen to them.
By the way, why is it that the Faux isn't doing the flip of what they did during "snowmageddon," running wall-to-wall coverage of the ongoing, year-after-year, relentless heat waves (and rapidly melting polar ice caps) we're experiencing on our planet, but this time using it to prove that there IS global warming (which also happens to be the correct answer)? Because, again, Faux "News" isn't "news," it isn't "fair and balanced," it isn't truthful or honest, it's just the Big Lie in the year 2011.
The other day, we laid out in great detail how the Arlington Sun-Gazette, despite its presence in Arlington (which that paper's editor no doubt believes deeply, in his heart of hearts, is "Communist Country") is nothing more than a right-wing, real-estate rag. Remember, this is the paper that believes global warming's "hysteria perpetuated by those, including the media, with agendas to pursue," that mainstream progressives and Democrats are "far left," that the whole "macaca" incident was actually "a little cheap politicking to throw Allen off his game," that homophobia is funny, that George Allen and Bill Bolling were worthy of his endorsement, that we should all leave poor Ken Cuccinelli alone, etc., etc. And, again, this is a paper whose entire economic model depends, close to 100%, on the patronage and advertising $$$ of the local real estate industry, people like Favola fundraising committee chair John Shooshan.
As is almost always the case, following the money trail usually tells you a great deal about what's motivating a politician. In this case, a lot of us in the mainstream progressive (not in quotes and not "far left," by the way) community have been wondering, why would a global-warming-denying, George Allen/Ken Cuccinelli Republican suddenly leap to Democrat Barbara Favola's defense, not just once but repeatedly, against the evil bloggers and the Jaime Areizaga-Soto campaign? At first glance, it would sure seem odd, but not after you think about who and what is funding both of them -- real estate money, and lots of it (despite the Arlington County Board's longstanding, internal understanding that members will NOT take such contributions, certainly not from interests with business before the Board, because it gives off at least the appearance of impropriety).
At this point, given that the Sun-Gazette is leaping to her defense every 5 minutes - and expending an awful lot of ink and dead trees (yes, they still are clinging desperately to that dying business model) in doing so - I'd love to hear someone ask Favola whether she agrees with the Sun-Gazette in its hatred of Jim Webb, Leslie Byrne, Chap Petersen, progressive activists, environmentalists, the reality of global warming, and probably kids on the Sun-Gazette's front lawn ("get off my lawn!!!"). Or maybe, in the end, this all just comes down to money. Remember, just the other day, Dick Saslaw, another huge fan of the real estate industry, was busy introducing Favola to lobbyists - and, of course, trying to persuade them to give, and give generously, to her campaign - at The Homestead. Can the connections here get any more obvious?
P.S. Thanks to one of my fellow progressives on Blue Virginia for suggesting the title to this diary. It really sums it all up.
Time Editor-in-Chief & MSNBC political commentator Mark Halperin has a long track record of bias against Democrats. Most infamously, in June 2006 as ABC's political unit director, Halperin warned, "If I were [Democrats], I'd be scared to death about November's elections." Just 5 months later, Democrats picked up 32 seats in the House & 7 seats in the Senate.
But today, Halperin outdid himself, using a curse to describe President Obama during MSNBC's "Morning Joe." If he's still employed by Time or MSNBC by the end of the day, can we finally put the "liberal media" meme to rest once & for all? Video NSFW:
That's right, according to Ken Kookinelli, net neutrality - "a principle which advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers or governments on consumers' access to networks that participate in the internet" - is actually the "most egregious of all violations of federal law." Yes, and up is down, black is white, war is peace, etc. Completely bonkers, yes, but since when has that ever stopped "the Cucc?"
Here at Blue Virginia, Del. Adam Ebbin's weighed in, pointing out that, in reality, new net neutrality "guidelines would increase competition, prevent censorship and protect consumers." As for Ken Kookinelli? I couldn't agree more with Adam Ebbin on this one:
"[Cuccinelli's] extremist campaigns against clean air, against a woman's right to choose, against union workers and against net neutrality are not what the people of Virginia want or need from their Attorney General," Ebbin said. "Ken Cuccinelli doesn't understand that today's emerging businesses depend on an open and free Internet to allow them to innovate and grow. He's willing to risk our economic future to advance his partisan agenda."
Ken Cuccinelli, the crazy, ignorant, intolerant face of the Virginia Republican Party. Any further questions? No? Good, then vote Democratic this November and let's make sure we don't lose the last check on this lunatic we've got -- the State Senate!
Spare us the so-called fact-checkers! Lowkell wrote of one suspect fact-checker. I have another to tell you about. And I do not believe it is an accident that WAPO and other media outlets all chant the same lines and scapegoat AARP. Indeed, Robert Greenwald's video shows, the elaborate and expensive war against Americans' best interests waged by billionaires and the politicians who love them. Add to that the corporate media who love them.
This past weekend, the entire national press corps was a-twitter purporting the AARP had changed its position in opposing cuts to Medicare as part fo the budget process--this following a WSJ "revelation," which, under Rupert Murdoch's Propaganda-R-Us, is about as credible as it's sister outlet, FAUX News. For days the WSJ, along with countless other outlets have been fanning the mythology about the AARP position on Social Security. But the AARP has not changed its position on Social Security. WAPO offered no Pinocchios to WSJ or the fawning media who lapped up it's drivel. Instead, it targeted the AARP in another matter, an ad it ran concerning budget priorities. And like so many Americans for Prosperity minions, the drumbeat against seniors and the AARP marches on.
It's sad, I had such high hopes for PolitiFact. Finally, a service that would do what the corporate media has failed so abjectly to do in recent years: report not just on what politicians say, but whether or not there's any truth to what they say. Instead, what we usually get from the corporate media is phony "objective reporting," wherein there are almost always two "sides" to everything, even if one "side" is a complete joke/lie/farce (e.g., global warming skeptics/deniers) while the other side is considered absolutely definitive by 99% of scientists or economists or whoever (e.g., global warming science).
Anyway, that's what I was hoping PolitiFact would get at. But, sadly, they haven't.
There have been several examples right here in Virginia in recent months. For instance, there was this hack job on Bob McDonnell's job. Then there was this pathetic attempt at "balance" that was anything but. There's also this hack job on Terry McAuliffe. And then there's this one, in which PolitiFact puts on the kid gloves for poor wittle Wobert Hurt.
That's just a few examples of PolitiFact Virginia's struggles with fact vs. fiction in recent months. What about beyond the borders of our fair Commonwealth?
With that, we bring you...the latest PolitiFact FAIL -- and for me the last straw with this organization -- this one on the question of whether, as Jon Stewart claimed the other day in his interview/debate with Chris Wallace, Fox News viewers are the "most consistently misinformed media viewers." According to PolitiFactFiction, Jon Stewart is wrong. But is he really, or should PolitiFact actually be renamed PolitiFiction or PolitiBias?
A case in point is Politifact’s recent and deeply misguided attempt to correct Jon Stewart on the topic of…misinformation and Fox News. This is a subject on which we’ve developed some expertise here…my recent post on studies showing that Fox News viewers are more misinformed, on an array of issues, is the most comprehensive such collection that I’m aware of, at least when it comes to public opinion surveys detecting statistical correlations between being misinformed about contested facts and Fox News viewership. I’ve repeatedly asked whether anyone knows of additional studies—including contradictory studies—but none have yet been cited.
I suggest you read the entire debunking of PolitiFiction at DeSmog Blog. Bottom line: this is a major fail by PolitiBias. And, as DeSmog Blog concludes, "When the fact checkers fail-and in this case, they not only failed, they generated a falsehood of their own--they have a special responsibility to self-correct." So, we're waiting guys!
Keith Olbermann's new Countdown debuted on Current TV Monday at 8 PM. For sheer courage, few in American broadcasting come close. At the moment when the corporate media had mostly circled the wagons to protect the Bush administration's lies to gain buy-in to the Iraq war, Olbermann bailed on the trumpeters to war and staked out a stance in defiance of the "watch what you say" crowd. His "Special Comments" were both beautifully written and landmark television. But that is not all. Mark Binelli of Rolling Stone has interviewed Olbermann concerning both his departure from MSNBC and his new venture. Perhaps nothing was quite as striking as his revelation about why he made the donations to three Arizona Democrats. Here's the question and Keith's reply:
Why did you give money to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and two other Democrats when you knew there was a rule against it? People say, "Why did you think you could get away with donating to Democrats?" Nobody ever asks me why I donated to those three Democrats. I discovered from a friend of mine who knows Arizona politics really well that all three had spent a lot of money, and I mean a lot of money, protecting themselves from assassination threats. To me, as a small-d democrat, as a member of a democracy, it pissed me off. I thought, "I'm going to help defray their expenses." That's all it was.
By any measure this is an extraordinary statement. You read that correctly, three AZ Congresspersons had received threats to their lives. They therefore had to spend an extraordinary proportion of their fund-raising dollars on security to prevent their own assassination at the hands of madmen or those who would commit political murder. And indeed, these three politicians and Keith Olbermann were prescient. History (unless subject to revisionism) will show just how much so. Gabbie Gifford, as everyone here knows, one of the recipients of Keith's maximum allowable contribution, was shot just a couple of months later. It is now doubtful she will ever return to Congress. And yet Keith's action was portrayed as simply a disallowed political contribution. How different things look when the truth comes out! And the snarks that he should have known better than to violate the "rules" of the workplace (that only he was held accountable for) were just so much claptrap.
In a democratic republic, threats against candidates and elected officials must be strongly repudiated. Yet in the aftermath of the Giffords tragedy too few Republicans attempted to call back the hate speech by their own. Nor did they dial back their own extreme statements. Instead, to divert attention, they claimed a false equivalence between the saber-rattlers and flame-throwers on their side and those like Olbermann. There is none. Even so, Keith dialed it back, though he had never done or said anything wrong.
Minneapolis, MN - Last Friday Demand Progress spoke out against the "10 Strikes" bill (S. 978) championed by Senator Amy Klobuchar. We called on the Senate to decelerate their efforts to pass this unfortunately written anti-piracy legislation. The 10 Strikes bill makes the streaming of unlicensed material a felony with a prison sentence of up to 5 years. In its current form only 10 streams of the content would be necessary to entail the maximum penalty.
The purpose of Blue Virginia is to cover Virginia politics from a progressive and Democratic perspective. This is a group blog and a community blog. We invite everyone to comment here, but please be aware that profanity, personal attacks, bigotry, insults, rudeness, frequent unsupported or off-point statements, and "trolling" (NOTE: that includes outright lies, whether about climate science, or what other people said, or whatever) are not permitted and, if continued, will lead to banning. For more on trolling, see the Daily Kos FAQs. Also note that diaries may be deleted if they do not contain at least 2 solid paragraphs of original text; if not, please use the comments section of a relevant diary. For more on writing diaries, click here. Thanks, and enjoy!
Reporting means more than just uncritically repeating a candidate's talking points and calling it a day. It requires judging what politicians say by the only appropriate standard of journalism, the truth.
Is the death spiral facing the Washington Post -- in which the newspaper itself is losing circulation and advertising, forcing the company to rely more heavily on the for-profit education industry (hence the nickname "Kaplan Post") -- accelerating? Based on 
On climate change, the Washington Post has a Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde problem. On the news side of the house, the paper often does a fine job separating facts from fiction. But this good work is sadly invalidated in the Op-Ed section, where the Post pays columnists to promote the dishonest propaganda of climate denial.
Nicholas Kristof's column for tomorrow asks 
The other day, we 
As if Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli wasn't enough of an embarrassment to the Commonwealth -- 
It's sad, I had such high hopes for PolitiFact. Finally, a service that would do what the corporate media has failed so abjectly to do in recent years: report not just on what politicians say, but whether or not there's any truth to what they say. Instead, what we usually get from the corporate media is phony "objective reporting," wherein there are almost always two "sides" to everything, even if one "side" is a complete joke/lie/farce (e.g., global warming skeptics/deniers) while the other side is considered absolutely definitive by 99% of scientists or economists or whoever (e.g., global warming science).
Keith Olbermann's new Countdown debuted on Current TV Monday at 8 PM. For sheer courage, few in American broadcasting come close. At the moment when the corporate media had mostly circled the wagons to protect the Bush administration's lies to gain buy-in to the Iraq war, Olbermann bailed on the trumpeters to war and staked out a stance in defiance of the "watch what you say" crowd. His "Special Comments" were both beautifully written and landmark television. But that is not all. Mark Binelli of Rolling Stone has interviewed Olbermann concerning both his departure from MSNBC and his new venture. Perhaps nothing was quite as striking as his 
