Sign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter.
We didn’t even have to check our calendar today to realize it’s a full moon. What else can explain the blogger love-in with the MSM?
Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly’s Political Animal offers this advice to Newsweek about its latest mea culpa for the Koran desecration story: “Enough already!”
This is like watching Darkness at Noon in real life. Newsweek made a small error in a 300-word blurb a couple of weeks ago, and since then the right-wing media hate machine, like a jackal sensing a rare opportunity for blood, has somehow managed to convince them they bear responsibility for riots in Afghanistan that were staged by extremists who obviously used the Newsweek article as nothing more than pretext.
Based on ample evidence elsewhere of naked prisoners, torture, memos justifying torture, and 36 deaths during interrogations, “Newsweek’s offense, which was pretty minor to begin with, is about the equivalent of jaywalking across a busy city street,” writes Drum.
Newsweek and the rest of the media need to get up off their knees and start fighting back. They’ve done enough apologizing.
(This was Drum’s second time at bat in recent days for team MSM.)
Speaking of apologies, Brad DeLong, no fan of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, thinks Dan Okrent owes her one. In his farewell column as Times ombudsman, Okrent chastises Dowd for continuing to write that Alberto R. Gonzales considers the Geneva Conventions “quaint.” Two months earlier the Times ran a correction noting that Gonzales had “applied the term to Geneva provisions about commissary privileges, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments,” but Dowd was unfazed.
DeLong details Gonzales’ public views on the Convention, and adds, “accusing him of calling them ‘quaint’ seems a very minor sin indeed.”
Back to the Newsweek flap for a minute, Suzanne Nossell at Democracy Arsenal, gives the subject the Leno treatment, offering up “10 reasons the real fallout from the Newsweek story is just beginning.” No. 5: “The Pentagon’s unwillingness to come to grips with the larger implications of the story….None of these problems will be corrected as long as a culture of denial continues to prevail.”
Marcus Jorgensen at CNN vs. Fox thinks pictures speak louder than words. Writes Jorgensen: “CNN ran a Reuters story and Fox News ran an AP story on Afghan President Karzai’s reaction to a report of U.S. abuse of detainees in Afghanistan, just prior to his first trip to the U.S.” Each contains four photos. Link to the post and see how each network illustrated its coverage.
Finally, the Brothers Judd look to the future and see A Glowing Bush. That would be Laura in ’08, based on her new political personae. But wait. Better hang on to those moving boxes for a while. Taegan Goddard says the First Lady may have some competition from another high-profile Republicaness whose last name rhymes with Nice.
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Has America ever needed a media defender more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.
