MediaBloodhound

Story of the Day

The photo in this Story of the Day monopolizes half the real estate of today's New York Times cover. The story, which is actually on page A8, satisfies inquiring minds of those desperate to know the impact of the Miss America pageant switching venues from Atlantic City to Las Vegas. Heady stuff. Stop the presses. Aside from the tabloid-esque, cheesecake nature of this photo, think of all the others that might have taken its place - domestic photos of, say, the current state of News Orleans and their residents or international photos of, say, the hell on earth that is Darfur, or scenes from Iraq, or any number of places around the world where vital news is occurring. Then think of all the other stories of greater newsworthiness that were bumped from the front page in favor of this gratuitous spread. And, no, not every story needs to be so serious; that's why, for example, there's an Arts & Entertainment section, which is where this story should have resided. Now, here's just one of those stories that didn't make the cover or the front page, landing on the very bottom of page A6: Pentagon Acts on Body Armor. And, again, here's what the editors deemed more newsworthy:

It's Not Atlantic City, but Miss America Pageant Adjusts Easily
By Jacques Steinberg
The New York Times

Story of the Day

Today's story is not from The Onion. It is real. Here's just a taste:

"Mr Aqtash [the media consultant] also told Mr Abu Tir [a leader in Hamas] to rid himself of a red beard, coloured by henna, because it makes people laugh."

This is one of the best unintentional satires of 21st century marketing you will find:

New-look Hamas Spends £100k on an Image Makeover, by Chris McGreal
The Guardian

Story of the Day

Google, along with Yahoo and Microsoft (which powers MSN Internet portals), already fully complies with the government of China to censor its search engines, greatly suppressing freedom of speech of Chinese citizens. As The New York Times editorial "Beijing's New Enforcer: Microsoft" noted on Tuesday, both Microsoft and Yahoo have not only agreed to have their search engines censored by Chinese authorities, they have also helped them shut down progressive blogs and sentence dissidents to years in jail by identifying senders of banned e-mail messages.

Now this kind of fascism is knocking at our door. Though Google is fighting this here, note this rather chilling sentence mentioned in passing in the third to last paragraph: "The government indicated that other, unspecified search engines have agreed to release the information, but not Google." See how today's reality in China could very easily be ours tomorrow:

Feds After Google Data, by Howard Mintz
San Jose Mercury News

Story of the Day

Iraq. Dateline: January 18, 2006. Tens of thousands of lives already lost, American and Iraqi. Snapshot of the war: No WMD. Trumped-up evidence. Truth met with pink slips. Porous borders, hospitals and weapons caches (containing bullets, roadside bomb-making material and nuclear waste) left unguarded. Laying off entire Iraqi army while letting them keep their weapons. Treasonous outing of CIA agent working on counterterrorism. Torture (in multiple cases, leading to murder). Secret renderings. Planting of propaganda in Iraqi newspapers. Confirmed report that insuffficient armor caused deaths of hundreds of soldiers. Incompetence rewarded or ignored by Bush Administration and mainstream press - Rumsfeld still has job after consigning many soldiers to unnecessary grave, former CIA chief George Tenet awarded Medal of Honor and Condi is presidential material after overseeing 9/11 bungling. Illegal spying on American citizens. "We must stay the course," Incurious George bleats. Protest is aiding the enemy. The "rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists." The killers, pronounced kil-lerzz by our giggling, cringe-inducing leader. The bad guys, as Hardball host Chris Matthews insipidly spouts. We will win, and we won't leave until victory has been achieved. Victory, victory, victory, Bush's new speech writer scribbles furiously. Cowards cut and run. Listen to your heart. Reality is a shifty thing. Facts are, in the Rumsfeldian vernacular, only known unknowns. Just listen to us, don't look over there:

Official US Agency Paints Dire Picture of 'Out-of-Control' Iraq
By Julian Borger
The Guardian

Story of the Day

Earlier today in a White House press briefing, in reference to Al Gore's speech and Hillary Clinton's critique about the Bush Administration, Scott McClellan says, "Well, I think we know one tends to like or enjoy grabbing headlines. The other one sounds like that the political season may be starting early." Flash forward to tonight's edition of NBC Nightly News. In David Gregory's piece, the import of Gore's speech is reduced to playing politics, taking McClellan's lead.

At one point, Gregory says, "What's clear is that campaigning for this year's midterm election is under way, with both sides settling into a political strategy."

So, alarmed that our democracy is under dire threat, a former two-term Vice President of the United States is moved to make a very public, honest and impassioned speech decrying the Bush Administration's total disregard for the rule of law, and this is what we get from our mainstream media (by the way, Gregory is part of the White House press corps, a direct witness to McClellan's earlier spin):

Washington's War of Words Heats Up, by David Gregory
NBC Nightly News

Story of the Day

Walter Cronkite's call to leave Iraq has gone virtually unnoticed. No mention on any of the major networks (ABC does include it on their website, but notice they've put it in the Entertainment section); no mention on CNN or MSNBC. The real story, however, lies not in the little play it's gotten, but rather the underlying reason why: the last thing today's major news anchors want is to underscore their lack of courage to do what Walter Cronkite - as a journalist and respected broadcaster as well as a concerned U.S. citizen - felt compelled to do, first during Vietnam and now. As we celebrate the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today, we're reminded of the added responsibility of those in the public eye to speak truth to power; their words carry a greater weight, as does their silence:

Cronkite: Time for U.S. to Leave Iraq, by David Bauder
Associated Press

Story of the Day

Skip down the transcript to the discussion Wolf Blitzer has with two members of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, Democrat Evan Bayh (apparently, a presidential contender in '08, who puts the "c" in centrist and "s" in stiff) and Republican Trent Lott (enough said) on the U.S. military airstrike on Pakistan that killed scores of innocent people and missed its alleged target, Al Queda's number two man Ayman al Zawahiri. In addition to being utterly hawkish in their perspective of "collateral damage," their language glibly unapologetic, both senators are also painfully shortsighted in not recognizing the firestorm this is causing in Pakistan, where a reported 10,000 plus citizens hit the streets in protest today, chanting, "Death to America!" (Incidentally, one 17-year-old student said 24 of his family members were killed as a result of the airstrike - yes, 24, just like that, among them his parents, four brothers, three sisters, five nephews and three sisters-in-law; aside from the sudden abject horror of his loss, what sane person does not think we are creating more terrorists by our continuing military presence.) I might as well have been watching Fox. The conversation starts off with a bang, as Senator Lott prefaces his response to Blitzer's question about the military targeting of Zawahiri. Lott says, "I don't know a lot about it," then proceeds to give his opinion on the matter. Shouldn't a member of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee know at least as much about this as Wolf Blitzer or some blogger in his boxer shorts in Nova Scotia. No wonder our intelligence is so woefully lacking. Enjoy the wonderment:

Today's Transcript
CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer

Story of the Day

I doubt The New York Times will be reporting this story:

New York Times Disconnects Public E-mail Addresses for Its Columnists
Raw Story

Story of the Day

The perfect encapsulation of our mainstream media (yes, it's dated the 10th and might not be deemed a "story," but I didn't think you'd want to miss this - and that's the main objective of S.O.T.D.):

This Modern World: The Scandal Unfolds, by Tom Tomorrow
(Posted on workingforchange)

Story of the Day

Thanks largely to our ratings-driven corporate media and politicians who must answer to the ill-informed constituency shaped by it, the majority of U.S. citizens live in a bubble. Specifically when it comes to the world at large. Natural disasters, famine, genocide, war, poverty and human rights abuses are on the radar only if American lives are directly affected. Otherwise, nothing has changed in our outlook of the suffering of fellow human beings in distant lands - they might as well be aliens living on another planet. It's the "Eat your food, people are starving in Africa" mentality that is still so ingrained in us. The "I can't think about what goes on in [insert name of foreign country], I got my own problems." Many will say, well, that's just the way of the world, that to think otherwise is to be an idealist. Maybe. Though I prefer this interpretation:

"Some men see things as they are and ask 'Why?' I dream things that never were and ask, 'Why not?'" -Robert F. Kennedy

RFK knew then that if we're to evolve as human beings, and as a nation, it should be incumbent on all of us to do better than this:

Beyond the Headlines: Doctors Without Borders Issues List of the Year's "Top Ten" Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2005
Common Dreams Newswire