Technology

The Washington Post Hires Ultraliberal Blogger Ezra Klein
By Stephen Gutowski | April 30, 2009 | 11:42 AM EDT

It seems that the Washington Post will soon be welcoming ultra-liberal hack blogger Ezra Klein to their online operations. Klein has often been the subject of stories by NewsBusters. This is what the Politico reported on the Post's acquisition of Klein (h/t OTB):

The American Prospect's Ezra Klein, one of the top bloggers on politics and policy, is heading to the Washington Post.

Rumors about Klein's upcoming move spread on Wednesday night during a reception thrown by The Nation magazine in honor of D.C. bureau chief Chris Hayes.

A Post spokesperson confirmed to POLITICO this morning that Klein was hired as a blogger at washingtonpost.com and is expected to start in about a month.

The move continues a regrettable trend started with their hiring of Greg Sargent, who formerly worked for the far left Talking Points Memo, to run a blog at one of the Post's websites. The addition of Sargent, an accomplished hack in his own right, was covered by Tim Graham here at NewsBusters. Tim quickly identified it as yet another example of the revolving door between liberal organizations and the mainstream media:

The New York Times Gets Defensive
By Stephen Gutowski | April 3, 2009 | 1:30 PM EDT

The New York Observer has noticed an interesting new trend at The New York Times. Its something that we have rarely, if ever, seen from The Times in it's long history. In fact, we are used to seeing a defiant and rather confident Times:

There was a time when The New York Times never had to say anything back. If the newspaper caught hell for a story in the popular media, editors at the paper could rely on the time-tested formulation: "The story speaks for itself." When critics carped about the newspapers' editorial vision, business plan, or financial position, it was once enough for Arthur Sulzberger or Janet Robinson to just sort of roll their eyes and move along. At the end of the day, The New York Times was still The New York Times.

No longer. Now, as The Observer chronicled, every criticism leveled at The Times is met with an immediate, if not insecure, defense. The trend seems to have started with the debacle surrounding the famous McCain/Lobbyist article in which The Times incompetently insinuated that Senator McCain had an affair. However, the defensiveness has continued at a more frequent pace since then:

With Old Media Gatekeepers Dying, What Will Take Their Place?
By Stephen Gutowski | March 31, 2009 | 5:32 PM EDT

As the downward spiral of old media continues at an ever faster pace many have begun to wonder what's next. Well, PBS's MediaShift blog has been mulling it over in a series of posts. Their thoughts on the current and future state of news are quite insightful and certainly warrant dissection and discussion.

Stephen Strauss starts off by noting the recent downfall of many main stream newspapers, as reported on NB by yours truly, and the resulting end of the "tyranny of reporters". Strauss celebrates the downfall of old media because of increased flow of information it has caused:

In the old print/radio/television world there wasn't much else you could do. Space and time was limited and so many things had to be left out, ignored or radically reconfigured. In ways that I don't think we truly appreciated, the media -- or rather the limitations of the media -- was the message.
One of the most magisterial things the Internet is doing is undermining the previous writer/editor dictatorship. Suddenly, what used to be effectively a one-sided conversation in which the writer did all the talking has been turned into an agora in which a piece is dissected and often reconstructed by the readers -- and if we ever get there, listeners and viewers, too.
Facebook Backs Down After Censoring Conservative Ad
By Stephen Gutowski | February 13, 2009 | 12:58 AM EST

In yet another example of flag spamming and poor corporate over sight Facebook decided this week to remove an ad from the conservative group Americans for Prosperity. The group was advertising a petition on their site nostimulus.com which lets people voice their opposition to the near $800 billion stimulus going through congress right now.

After originally screening and approving the ad CNS News, a sister site of NewsBusters and the Media Research Center, reports that Facebook claimed to have received some complaints from users. They then proceeded to put a disapproval notice on it and then yank it from the site all together and notified Americans for Prosperity of their reasoning:

Once the NoStimulus.com Web site started getting a large volume of visitors, Kerpen told CNSNews.com, “they put a disapproval notice on it and they pulled the ad."

CNN's Rick Sanchez: 'Tax Cuts Are Spending, Right?'
By Mike Bates | February 9, 2009 | 10:31 AM EST
On Friday's CNN Newsroom, anchor Rick Sanchez dazzled viewers with his profound grasp of economics.  His guest was CNN chief business correspondent Ali Velshi, whose most recent achievement was being called "incompetent" by Rush Limbaugh:
SANCHEZ: You know, it's funny, but, as I hear him (President Barack Obama).talk, I'm just thinking, tax cuts are spending, right? I mean, they really are, because you have got to get it from somewhere.

VELSHI: Right. If you think about it, is -- your own budget, right? If you have less money coming in, you have to have less money going out.

The issue is that -- the argument is that, tax cuts, while it brings less money into the government, which means it lowers the amount of money the government has, which makes it the equivalent of spending, it stimulates the economy, because it lets -- people will use that money in another way.
The way tax cuts could be considered spending, a contention with which Velshi agreed, is if one believes that all income belongs not to the individual earning it, but rather to the government.  It's then government's option to determine how much people are permitted to keep and if they're using it "appropriately."

Sanchez's reasoning reminds me of President Bill Clinton, who said of the budget surplus: "We could give it back to you and hope you spend it right." But "if you don't spend it right," bad things would happen to Social Security and other programs.
Ed Schultz Falsely Credits Medical Research 'Change' to Obama
By Jack Coleman | January 28, 2009 | 3:24 PM EST

Say, how 'bout the news of President Obama lifting the ban on embryonic stem cell research imposed by his predecessor?

What, you haven't heard? With good reason. Former president Bush did not impose this, making it all but impossible for Obama to reverse it.

CNBC Highlights Conspicuous Green Consumption
By Mark Finkelstein | November 26, 2008 | 12:23 PM EST
Some wag dubbed the Prius the "Pious," for the smug self-righteousness of its greener-than-thou owners.  CNBC ran a segment this morning highlighting an even pricier form of conspicuous green consumption: the installation of geothermal wells in Manhattan as an alternative form of HVAC.

Narrating a segment that would have had Veblen nodding in approval, CNBC's Bertha Coombs observed "for many, it represents bragging rights in the pursuit of green luxury."  That segued to a clip of New York magazine's Jesse Oxfeld explicitly making the conspicuous consumption point.

View video here.
The Man Behind 'The McCain-Palin Mob'
By Danny Glover | October 13, 2008 | 10:25 AM EDT

A Barack Obama supporter in Ohio with deep roots in Democratic politics -- and a 2001 sex-related felony conviction to his name -- is behind two new confrontational videos that bait ignorant people into calling Barack Obama a terrorist.

The first video was released Wednesday and has gone viral. It currently has more than 1.1 million views on YouTube. Part II went online a day later and is well on its way to viral status, with more than 145,000 views.

The John McCain and Sarah Palin supporters in the videos are characterized as “The McCain-Palin Mob.” The videos selectively feature voters who, upon being asked antagonistic questions, make some outrageous statements about Obama.

'Flag Spam,' the Preferred Tool of the Left's Web Censors
By Matthew Sheffield | October 7, 2008 | 9:41 AM EDT

Obama spam costume One of the hottest Internet videos during the mortgage and banking crisis has been a YouTube clip titled "Burning Down the House," which outlines the untold story of how liberal Democrats pressured banks and lenders to throw standards out the window and give money to people who couldn't pay it back.

Try watching it now, however, and you won't be able to, thanks to the growing problem of "flag spam," the practice of abusing online filter systems to squelch political speech with which one disagrees.

We've all seen spammers at work in our e-mail inboxes. Experts estimate that 90 percent of all e-mail messages nowadays are spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Luckily for most of us, the majority of it gets filtered out. That's caused the more sophisticated spammers to change course and target a more vulnerable part of the Internet - the hugely popular Web sites like YouTube, Digg and the blogosphere, where anyone can join the discussion by posting videos, essays, reviews and other content.

Profaning The Eucharist At YouTube
By Danny Glover | October 6, 2008 | 3:29 PM EDT

When interviewed by Eyeblast.tv last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that YouTube, the video-sharing site owned by his company, is "pretty serious" about removing the "strange" videos that keep popping up on the site, especially videos "that can be used to incite bad outcomes." Apparently videos designed to incite Catholics don't fall into that category.

A YouTube user who goes by the moniker "fsmdude" has posted more than 30 videos under the title "Eucharist Desecration." Each video features an attack on a symbol that Catholics consider sacred -- by blow gun, nail gun, boiling, sword and cigarette in a few recent episodes.

The creator of the videos isn't subtle about his intent. He was angered by reports of a college student allegedly receiving e-mail threats from "fanatical Catholics" after the student snatched a wafer at mass, so "fsmdude" decided to repeatedly profane the Eucharist on camera for all to see.

Naked Eye: CBS iPhone App Hit with Risque Content
By Ken Shepherd | October 1, 2008 | 12:28 PM EDT

Advertising Age magazine reports today that CBS News has gotten "[A] Rude Lesson in Citizen Journalism" with its iPhone application. It turns out the "Eyemobile for iPhone" has become a handy vehicle for amateur pornographers to spam the site:

A visit to CBSeyemobile.com turns up a few photos that walk the line of not-safe-for-work, a jarring juxtaposition with CBS's storied news brand.

What's more, Google is advertising on the clips via AdMob.

FBI Closes in on Alleged Palin Hacker
By Matthew Sheffield | September 23, 2008 | 4:12 PM EDT

The feds are zeroing in on David Kernell, the suspected hacker of GOP veep nominee's Yahoo email account:

The FBI searched the residence of the son of a Democratic state lawmaker in Tennessee over the weekend looking for evidence linking the young man to the hacking of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press on Monday.

David Kernell, 20, has not returned repeated phone calls or e-mails from the AP since last week. He is the son of state Rep. Mike Kernell, a Memphis Democrat and chairman of Tennessee's House Government Operations Committee. The father declined last week to discuss the possibility his son might be involved in the case.