You’ll have to excuse anyone, like me, who works for Time Warner for having flashbacks this morning, as word spreads of AOL buying The Huffington Post for $315 million. (Here’s HuffPo’s statement.) A high-profile deal between a media content company and AOL, with starry-eyed leaders on both sides promising synergies that will make “1 …
News Media
The War on the Media in Egypt
Yesterday we had word of CNN’s Anderson Cooper and his camera crew getting attacked and beaten by pro-Mubarak demonstrators in Egypt. Today, it seems increasingly clear that attacks on the media by Mubarak-supporting crowds, and harassment by the government itself, has quickly become widespread, if not systematic. Some of the troubling …
Hands-On With Murdoch's iPad Newspaper, The Daily
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For those of you for whom the ability to play large-format Scrabble games is not reason enough to own an iPad, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp today unveiled The Daily, its new, ambitious, multimedia iPad newspaper. You can see a demo of the product above and read writeups of the …
Anderson Cooper and Crew Attacked in Egypt
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When an international news story like the uprising in Egypt breaks, American anchors will often appears on the scene in what appear to be carefully controlled circumstances. But as Anderson Cooper‘s CNN crew showed, there is no magical bubble of American-media invulnerability at the scene of a …
The Morning After: Window on the World
I’m still largely out of commission today, but the news never takes a day off. So I thought I’d throw this post open for your thoughts on the TV news coverage of the astonishing events in Egypt—in particular, on Al Jazeera English, which most of us (me included) can only see streaming online. While the Qatar-based network has owned …
Snow Day Video Break; Plus, Media's Snowcabulary Challenged
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There’s a lot of snow where you are, …
SOTU Roundup; or, What Is Michele Bachmann Looking At?
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When CNN announced that it would air not only the official GOP response to the State of the Union address but a live Tea Party response, given by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), I was skeptical. On the one hand, it gave the GOP two responses—a courtesy not afforded to opposition party factions, …
Is Cable News Going to Get Sorkin-ized?
Keith Olbermann may be out of a job now, but there’s a possibility that he—or a fictional character bearing his likeness—may end up getting the Jedediah Josiah Bartlet, or Mark Zuckerberg, treatment on HBO. Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and likely soon-to-be Oscar nominee for writing The Social Network, has told the BBC that …
Keith Olbermann Is Out at MSNBC—Immediately
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Talk about a Special Comment: Keith Olbermann announced on air that tonight’s edition of Countdown on MSNBC will be his last—specifically, that he was “told” it would be his last show—a move that was quickly confirmed by the network …
Piers Morgan's "O"-Level: A Cheeky, Odd Introduction
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Oprah Winfrey was a puzzling, or maybe perfect, choice of first guest for Piers Morgan Tonight. There is probably nothing more you want to know about Oprah. Or, sure, there is—but nothing that she’s going to tell you. But she was an attention-getting big “get” (even if she’s been …
Obama to America: Open Your Eyes
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It was fortunate coincidence that President Barack Obama was able to begin his memorial speech Wednesday in Tucson with a bit of good news. Before he spoke to the memorial for the victims of Saturday’s shootings, the President announced, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had opened her eyes for …
Sarah Palin Steers Into the Skid
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Wait! Come back! I swear this is not one more post about Sarah Palin’s “blood libel” reference!
Well, not exactly. I will leave it to others to judge the way she described her personal claim of unfair treatment in the media using the term for the charge that a religious minority, usually Jews, …
Did Extreme Talk Pull The Trigger? Wrong Question
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One of my first reactions to the sickening shooting in Arizona, and to the charge that it resulted from violent imagery from politicians and media figures: the Rally for Sanity is suddenly not looking so wishy-washy and irrelevant for focusing on the tone of politics.
One of my next …