Brooklyn Mutt

“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said David Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media.

The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”

“I’m leaving The Washington Post to become DC bureau chief for the Daily Beast. Great new challenge.”

“CNN’s Kyra Phillips and John Roberts spent a good five minutes yesterday expressing serious concern over what they called “the dark side” of the Internet: the plague of “anonymous bloggers” who are “a bunch of cowards” for not putting their names on what they say, and who use this anonymity to spread “conspiracy,” “lunacy,” “extremism” and false accusations (video below). The segment included excerpts from an interview with Andrew Keene, author of Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture, who explained that the Real Media must serve as “gatekeepers” to safeguard the public against the dangers of anonymity on the Internet. Roberts demanded that bloggers should “have the courage at the very least to put your name on it,” while Phillips announced: “something is going to have to be done legally… . these people have to be held accountable, they’re a bunch of cowards.”

These CNN journalists have a very good point, of course: it was, after all, Internet bloggers — using the scourge of anonymity — who convinced the nation of a slew of harmful conspiracy theories: Saddam had WMD, an alliance with Al Qaeda,…”

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…An angry (D) Rep. Rangel asked MSNBC’s Luke Russert to identify his outlet and the congressman seemed perplexed by the answer. Presumably Rangel thought he was talking to a son of Sean Hannity. Rangel protested that Russert “doesn’t really sound like NBC.” He added that “It just shows what happened to a channel that did have some respect.”

Rangel didn’t know the half of it. Not only a real question for a Democrat in trouble, but, moments ago, after playing video of the dust-up, MSNBC ran a line reminding viewers of Nancy Pelosi’s “most ethical Congress in history” pledge

“In rare move, NYT encourages its readers to check out the Wash Post “Top Secret” series: http://nyti.ms/aeD04y”

“…a NEXIS media search reveals that the word “disgraced” appears extremely close to the phrase “Eliot Spitzer” (within two words) a total of 394 times.

By blindingly stark contrast, ever since he got caught hiring prostitutes to wrap him in diapers while campaigning on the basis of Family Values, the word “disgraced” appeared within two words of the name “David Vitter” a grand total of 4 times — all from small blogs.

I thought about this issue because Newt Gingrich announced today that he was seriously considering running for President, and I virtually never see the word “disgraced” attached to his name; in fact, in the 3 years since he confessed to James Dobson that he was cheating on his second wife with his then-mistress-and-congressional-aide/now-third-wife, at the same time as he was leading the Clinton impeachment hearings…”

“We don’t need a state-run media because our media outlets volunteer for the task.”

“In his first post arguing that [Dave] Weigel’s hiring evinced the Post’s journalistic decline, [Jeffery] Goldberg relied upon “one of [his] friends at the Post,” to whom he granted anonymity to trash Weigel as an “idiot” and someone who has “destroyed” the paper’s reputation. Just think about that: in the very same post where Goldberg pretentiously grieved for the collapse of journalistic standards, his “source” was a cowardly “friend” of his at the Post who was granted anonymity solely to spit out catty, petulant name-calling. Is that supposed to be journalism: granting anonymity to your friends to puke up conclusory condemnations of other reporters? That’s like lamenting the decline of American journalism while quoting the answers provided by one’s Oujia Board.”