Turns out there’s a fairly clear answer to the question Why is Julian Assange doing this? Anyway, it’s as clear as the topic of human motivations ever really get. Back in 2006, Assange wrote a couple of essays on the
A new AP story says that, according to Obama’s own deficit commission, Obamacare isn’t going to bend the cost curve without some serious cuts from the top down: Sarah Palin take note: For the first time, the government would set
Rachel Maddow is deeply concerned about political violence, at least when it comes from the other side of the aisle. This week Maddow devoted an hour of her program to the murder of George Tiller, the Kansas area abortionist who
Ever since the shellacking Democrats suffered in the midterms, their strategists and donors have been meeting to discuss plans for 2012. Tuesday, the New York Times reported on the latest high profile effort by David Brock, head of Media Matters:
Tuesday, Ted Koppel appeared on NPR to continue his defense of “objective” journalism. His main objection to outlets like Fox and MSNBC seems to be that these news organizations are trying to make a profit: The fact that you have
The other night Rachel Maddow interviewed John Stewart. It’s about 7 minutes long, but interesting if you care about this sort of thing: Jon Stewart claims not to be “on the field” but in the stands. Maddow contends that what
Christopher Dickey’s profile at Newsweek says he’s a “distinguished journalist and author” but his latest piece for the magazine comes across as the work of a desperate Daily Kos diarist. His basic thesis is that the Tea Parties of today
Most of the time when a guest appears on a news show he’s there because he’s trying to sell a book. That was certainly the case when Ted Rall appeared on Dylan Ratigan’s show on MSNBC yesterday. What’s different about
Paul Krugman has a typically bombastic new column titled The Focus Hocus-Pocus. His thesis: the notion that the Obama administration erred by not focusing on the economy is hardening into conventional wisdom. But I have no idea what, if anything,
With the release last week of another cache of classified documents via Wikileaks, we’ve learned a few things about the war in Iraq. One of the highlights, if it can be called that, is just how heavily involved Iran was
Last night NPR’s Ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, finally put up a post commenting on the story that had been raging all day. It might have been up sooner, but she’d spent most of yesterday responding to a wave of negative reaction
With all of their previous efforts at creating a boogeyman in time for the midterms having failed, the administration has now chosen to embrace a fact-challenged allegation from a liberal blogger as their last, desperate hope. The public roll out
Business Insider is an online news outlet founded by a couple of tech wizards from Silicon Valley. Recently the magazine had an interview scheduled with the CEO of About.com to talk about the company’s outlook. Though the interview had been
Most of the time media bias is difficult to prove. Whatever the story might be, it’s not often possible to prove how the same material would have been handled if the party labels had been reversed. So the claim can
Back in 2008, Barack Obama and his media staff–David Axelrod, Anita Dunn and David Plouffe–had the press eating out of their hands. It was, to repeat a phrase, a slobbering love affair. Things have changed in 24 short months. Yesterday,
When it comes to political horserace stories, the editor is confronted with a dilemma. One party is up and the other is down. Which one gets highlighted in the headline isn’t necessarily determined by the story itself. It’s a judgment
Let me say up front that I think Koran burning is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. In fact, I think what this little church in Florida is doing is actually harmful to the nation, their own safety
Many have pointed out the ways in which Michael Joseph Grosss’ piece on Palin seems both unfair and under sourced. I won’t rehash all of that. I’ll just comment on the one section that stood out to me: The term
Notice the picture which the New York Times is painting of this week’s primary results: Republican insurgents from the far right did well in Tuesday’s primaries. What their campaigns lack in logic, compassion and sensible policy seems to be counterbalanced
Apparently, shutting down Ezra Klein’s JournoList listserv wasn’t enough to kill it. I spotted it lumbering through the dense undergrowth of the MSM just today. Over at Newsweek, former JournoLista Ben Adler recycles the talking points of former JournoLista Greg
I thought Josh Marshall would take the crown for most hysterical reaction to opposition to Cordoba House. His call for a Shoah-like project to document the evil as it happened (i.e. resistance to Cordoba House) seemed like a shoo-in, but
Greg Sargent is a Washington Post blogger and compromised JournoList hack whose “Plum Line” entries are decidedly left of center. Greg was overwhelmed with enthusiasm last Friday when, for a brief but shining moment, it appeared President Obama was supporting
Most Big Journalism readers are probably already familiar with Tyler Collins. Tyler is the man who walked through the Fancy Farms picnic in Kentucky a few days ago pretending to be a Rand Paul supporter. He was carrying a sign
It seems to me that the truth ought to be a defense against any charge of racism or slander. You shouldn’t be able to generate outrage over the fact that person A calls person B a communist, for instance, if
It’s not fair to blame Beck for violence committed by people who watch his show. This tiny journalistic fig leaf appears midway through Dana Milbank’s latest article for the Washington Post. The remainder of Milbank’s 750-word piece is devoted to
