Tim Graham
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The TVNewser blog at Mediabistro.com has a set of recollections from a Peter Jennings memorial service today, and includes "wisecracks" from his ABC colleague Ted Koppel: "Peter was famously, even notoriously, attracted to women. Even so, he only married four of them."
The Washington Post reports that the Lincoln Center hurricane fundraiser (broadcast in condensed form Saturday night on PBS) carried some liberal speechifying in it from celebrities.
I caught just the roundtable segment of "Meet the Press," so I could hear PBS's Gwen Ifill and the WashPost's Eugene Robinson pitch the idea that they're not saying Bush or FEMA are racists, just that the structures of society at present are racist, and (more oddly) that those expressing these views are quite reasonable. That's wrong.
Ouch! MediaBistro's blog TVNewser (or Brian Stelter) drew a Fox News executive into responding to Tina Brown's rant in yesterday's Washington Post about how Rupert Murdoch needs to shift Fox News "to the center" for the sake of ratings with the following:
Hmm, which puff piece for liberal heroes (without actually stooping to use the word "liberal") would the typical reader of the Washington Post prefer in today's Style section? Would it be the Marcia Davis article about John Lewis, "civil rights icon," lecturing about John Roberts and his awful work for awful Ronald Reagan?
PostWatch demonstrates that it's worth scrolling through the WashingtonPost.com live chats from time to time. Days after that persistent blog found liberal columnist (and former Post reporter) Marc Fisher expressing bewilderment that anyone would stay through a hurricane for a pet when you can just go buy a new one, Fisher goes on another tear over the Pledge of Allegiance:
Romenesko has highlighted for journalists across the country today a Washington City Paper article pounding for more attention to be paid to an article on Socialist Worker online. Contributors Lorrie Beth Slonsky and Larry Bradshaw were in New Orleans during the hurricane and its aftermath, and claim that police in Gretna, Louisiana, would not let them cross the bridge, and even fired weapons at the evacuees.
Tom Johnson, a long-time friend and colleague, forwarded to me a passage from Weekly Standard writer Christopher Caldwell observations on the tenth anniversary of the Murdoch-funded think mag:
The Washington Post reported today on the Virginia gubernatorial debate between Republican Jerry Kilgore and Democrat Tim Kaine, noting how Kilgore "faltered under a series of questions by moderator Tim Russert, host of NBC's Meet the Press."
The Washington Post has fun juxtaposing hurricane headlines and graphics today. The top left of the front page reads "45 Bodies Found In La. Hospital." The subhead is "Bush Visits New Orleans and Defends Federal Response; FEMA Chief Quits." I doubt the Post would have merged a Democratic president's actions with the somewhat unrelated discovery of bodies.
Coming out of the John Roberts opening statement at 3:30 on MSNBC, anchor Brian Williams asked Tim Russert that Roberts is "not a perjurer or a lawbreaker that we know of," but how can one greet his claim that he has no agenda? That's quite a dramatic way of suggesting Roberts may not be trustworthy.
Stephen Spruiell at NRO reports that among the new features on CBS's Public Eye blog are a defense of "Sunday Morning" commentator Nancy Giles.
1. Christopher Fotos at PostWatch notes that Kanye West has company in WashPost columnist Colbert King. King also was offering his respect for Kanye on the talk show Inside Washington, and Charles Krauthammer quickly told him he was nuts.
NPR's All Things Considered tonight carried a story from reporter Frank Langfitt focusing on how Wal-Mart brought their efficient distribution system to bear in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, particularly in Kenner, Louisiana, where their supplies arrived before federal or Red Cross help. He did conclude by noting that Wal-Mart is videotaping their charity for reporters. But hey, why not? Wal-Mart has been quite a whipping boy for negative media coverage.
In this week's U.S. News & World Report, Terence Samuel's profile of "fascinating" Arlen Specter, the "inscrutable" moderate chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is accompanied by a box of mini-biographies titled "Other Players in the Drama." Notice the subtle contrasts in Republican and Democrat profiles.
The big article in the Washington Post Style section today puffs far-left author Barbara Ehrenreich, but reporter Bob Thompson doesn't exactly focus on her place on the political spectrum. (Hint: the former Time essayist likes the Communist Manifesto for its "timeless" message and its resemblance to the teachings of Jesus.
On NPR's Morning Edition on Tuesday, ABC reporter Judy Muller unleashed another of her occasional commentaries for public radio. (Listen here.) Some of them are light, but Tuesday's was tough. Muller was angry at the inattention poor black people get outside of natural disasters, saying "Hurricanes don't discriminate, but society does discriminate." Here's the transcript of what she said, beginning with mockery of the president:
At the bottom of an E! Online story on Kanye West's NBC outburst, we're alerted that BET and MTV have decided to give West more of a platform for his emotional ranting:
Over at That Liberal Media, Jim Miller notes that the September issue of the American Enterprise magazine has three numbers from a Nexis search that tell a tale about the news media's priorities in covering the war in Iraq. Paul Smith, a 33-year-old married man with two children, won the Medal of Honor for giving his life for his country. Lynndie England won infamy for grinning through pictures of prisoner humiliation at Abu Ghraib. "Koran abuse" was all the rage as a news story soon after.