Media Business

From the March 8 edition of James Taranto's Best of the Web. (H/t: Nathan Burchfiel):Another Man's Victim?Reuters has a cute little human interest story about funny people from Vermont holding "town meetings" where they call for President Bush's impeachment. What caught our eye was not the darling little Vermonters, though, but something in this paragraph:

Who says liberals lack a sense of humor? The new owner of Air America suggests that the original version of the radio network went bankrupt because . . . it was too even-handed.Mark Green is a veteran New York pol, having served as NYC's Public Advocate and run unsuccessfuly for US senator, NYC mayor and state attorney general. His family business recently completed the acquisition of Air…

UPDATE (10:46 EST): Kaplan is, of course, an old Bill Clinton buddy. But beyond that, he defended former CBS "Evening News" anchor Dan Rather well after the Memogate scandal as a "balanced and accurate" journalist. Noted MRC Vice President and NewsBusters Editor Brent Baker in his Oct. 4, 2005, "CyberAlert":

I know print publications tend to move slower than online outlets, but this is ridiculous.On March 6, The Washington Post featured a story by staff writer Darryl Fears entitled "In Diversity Push, Top Universities Enrolling More Black Immigrants." Fears found critics who complain that some university admissions diversity policies end up drawing in more foreign black students at the expense of…

The same day the MRC's Culture and Media Institute (CMI) released its study [pdf available here] dealing with the media's preference for "secular progressive" values over those of those of orthodox religious faiths, evangelical magazine Christianity Today noticed that many newspapers are losing their religion [sections].The CMI study concluded that: Americans have clearly identified the media as…

Fox & Friends Weekend hasn't lost Kiran Chetry -- it's gained Ainsley Earhardt. The recent FNC hire began her tenure on this weekend's shows, and by all appearances has made a smooth landing. Sandwiched between the "Kelly Brothers," Kelly Wright and Greg Kelly, one of the first stories the trio discussed this morning was the results of the presidential straw poll at this weekend's CPAC…

Update/Correction (3/1/2007, 10:32 EST): Oops. Ted Olsen is the online managing editor for Christianity Today and he e-mailed me to point out his byline as the "former solicitor general" was part of the satire. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go have lunch with James Cameron...Former solicitor general Ted Olsen wrote a brief satire that illustrates the absurdity of filmmaker James Cameron's…

NewsBusters has reported for months how the mainstream media did an absolutely lousy job covering the controversy surrounding former President Jimmy Carter’s book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [see editor's note at bottom of post]. As odd as it may seem, the ombudsman for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution agreed with us.Angela Tuck, the AJC’s public editor, wrote the following on…

Is it just coincidence that a story has appeared touting the fact that Al Sharpton is the descendant of slaves, ones owned by relatives of Strom Thurmond to boot? Or could this be the unofficial kick-off of the Sharpton presidential campaign, with a major boost from the reverend's hometown newspaper?Let's put these three stories together:On January 17, a story appears reporting: "civil rights…

The Associated Press reports that three journalists are being kicked out of Cuba for writing stories critical of the Communist regime: one BBC reporter, a Chicago Tribune reporter, and a correspondent for El Universal, a Mexican newspaper.When I read this I recalled a study by MRC's Rich Noyes a few years back about CNN's Cuba coverage, which, by contrast, never incensed the Castro regime. In…