NewsTrust - Mainstream Media - Most Recent Stories: News

Google Computes News Quality

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

InformationWeek - By Thomas Claburn - Nov. 16 (News Report) - A recently filed patent application suggests that Google is taking steps to promote news produced by major media companies on Google News. Whenever a newspaper dies, Google turns up on the list of suspects. The evidence of Google's involvement tends to be sketchy. A close examination of the crime scene typically points to a different villain -- the classified revenue killer known as Craigslist, parasitic news sites that siphon potential visitors, declining subscription and ad revenue, management that can't adapt, or the hyper-competition created by the Internet's ability to collapse distance and divert attention. But Google nonetheless has been forced to defend itself. In May, Marissa Mayer, Google's VP of search products and user experience, testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet that Google is the hand that feeds media companies, channeling over one billion clicks every month to online publishers through Google Search and Google News. She suggested that Wikipedia, with its constantly updated articles, might offer a better model for journalism in the Internet age than a series of separate articles. And she proposed that online publishers might be failing their readers by presenting them with Web pages that lack engaging social features.

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API's Partnership With Newsweek Raises Ad Cash and Ethics Questions

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Anne C. Mulkern - Nov. 05 (News Analysis) - Newsweek and API have teamed on four forums so far and are planning another -- "Climate and Energy Policy: Moving?" -- for Dec. 1, when the Senate could be holding a floor debate on climate legislation. An invitation sent yesterday to lawmakers' offices said Gerard again would be a panelist and that requests to speak were "currently pending confirmation with notable members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate." Lawmakers receiving invitations included Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

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What's So Scary About Michael Pollan? Why Corporate Agriculture Tried to Censor His University Speech | Health and Wellness

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By Martha Rosenberg - Oct. 28 (News) - "Agribusiness gets plenty of opportunities to preach its point of view at agriculture schools such as Cal Poly, where the likes of Monsanto and Cargill fund research," the Times wrote, calling the 800-acre Harris Ranch, near Coalinga, whose "smell assaults passersby long before the panorama of thousands of cattle packed atop layers of their own manure,"--"Cowschwitz." Ouch.

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WH: We're Happy To Exclude Fox, But Didn't Yesterday

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Talking Points Memo - By Christina Bellantoni - Oct. 24 (News Report) - Adding to the Fox News v. White House feud today is a dust-up over an interview with pay czar Ken Feinberg. Feinberg did a pen and pad with reporters to brief them on cutting executive compensation. TV correspondents asked to get the comments on camera; Treasury agreed to one pool camera, giving the list of those who asked. (Fox was not among them)

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Communications arm? Fox & Friends recites misleading GOP press release on stimulus

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media Matters - Oct. 23 (News Analysis) - Fox & Friends hosts Brian Kilmeade, Steve Doocy, and Gretchen Carlton parroted a House Republican press release and repeated its claim that the stimulus impact is "6 million jobs shy of what the administration promised us" since the administration stated "that 3.5 million jobs would be created. And, in fact, the United States has lost 2.7 million since the stimulus plan." However, the administration estimated that by 2011 -- not September 2009, when the 2.7 million job losses since February were recorded -- 3.5 million jobs would be created or saved by the stimulus compared to the number of jobs that would have existed at the end of 2010 had the government not passed the legislation.

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Attack on White House criticism of Fox follows years of GOP assaults on media

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media Matters - Oct. 23 (News Analysis) - Following White House communications director Anita Dunn's entirely justified criticisms of Fox News as an "arm" of the Republican Party, conservative media figures have attacked both Dunn and the Obama administration. But Media Matters for America has compiled a list of organized attacks that GOP leaders -- often aided by Fox News -- have conducted against media outlets based on groundless complaints of bias; those attacks have included boycotts or threatened boycotts of media outlets, efforts to revoke journalists' credentials or ban them from press planes, and even calls to have journalists prosecuted.

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W.H. attacks worry moderate Dems

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Jonathan Allen, Jake Sherman - Oct. 23 (News Report) - A White House effort to undermine conservative critics is generating a backlash on Capitol Hill — and not just from Republicans. “It’s a mistake,” said Rep. Jason Altmire, a moderate Democrat from western Pennsylvania. “I think it’s beneath the White House to get into a tit for tat with news organizations.”

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Behind War Between White House and Fox

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jim Rutenberg - Oct. 23 (News Report) - Late last month, the senior White House adviser David Axelrod and Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive of Fox News, met in an empty Palm steakhouse before it opened for the day, neutral ground secured for a secret tête-à-tête.

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Neutralizing the opposition

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Howard Kurtz - Oct. 22 (News Analysis) - The Foxified debate over whether the White House is being mean to a certain network is morphing into a broader argument about the politics of negativity. The question, which is being pushed on the right, is whether the Obama team is using its muscle to demonize its opponents. The president bears a special burden in this regard. He ran as a post-partisan guy who would reach out to the other side. (Of course, Bush also ran as a uniter-not-a-divider, and that didn't work out too well.) But while Obama is a conciliator by nature, what should a politician do when the opposition refuses to meet him even a quarter-way? Number of Republican votes for the stimulus: zero. Number of Republican votes so far for health-care reform: one. And if the insurance industry, after making a deal with the White House, attempts to sink health care? What administration wouldn't fight back? I just wonder if Obama is being held to a higher standard when he practices plain ol' politics.

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Pro-Israel Group's Money Trail Veers Hard Right

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Eli Clifton - Oct. 22 (News) - But an IPS investigation into the tax records of the donors to StandWithUs, which professes to be ideologically neutral, found a web of funders who support organisations that have been accused of anti-Muslim propaganda and encouraging a militant Israeli and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Some of these organisations have tied the origins of Palestinian nationalism to Nazi ideology, and suggested that a vast Muslim conspiracy - in a similar vein to the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion - is mobilising to undermine the U.S. constitution and impose Sharia law.

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Latinos to CNN: Are You With Us or Against Us?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Manuel Avendano - Oct. 22 (News) - Dozens of angry demonstrators gathered in Manhattan on Wednesday to demand that the cable news network CNN fire its prime-time anchor Lou Dobbs for his denigration of Hispanic immigrants.

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CNN Can't Have It Both Ways: It Can Either Broadcast Hateful Lou Dobbs or Have a Latino Audience

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Roberto Lovato - Oct. 15 (News Analysis) - Latinos across America are intensely concerned about CNN's hypocrisy: Broadcasting Dobbs' anti-immigrant extremism while running a Latinos in America special series.

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In Today's Viral World, Who Keeps a Civil Tongue?

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ann Gerhart - Oct. 10 (Special Report) - "... the Internet has changed the relationship between the elite and the non-elite. Everybody has the opportunity to be a great communicator for 15 minutes,"

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Calling 'Em Out: The White House Takes on the Press

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By The Huffington Post News Editors - Oct. 08 (News Analysis) - Nine of those so-called czars, it turned out, were subject to Senate confirmation, making them decidedly unlike the Russian monarchs. "The idea — that the Washington Post didn't even question it," Dunn says, still marveling at the decision.

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Iraq All Over Again?

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - By Editors - Oct. 08 (News Analysis) - There have been recent discussions (e.g., New York Times, 9/29/09) about whether the press is doing a better job covering allegations about Iran's nuclear program than they did during the run-up to the Iraq War. But in some crucial and very basic ways, many in the media are performing just as poorly as they did in 2002 and 2003

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WaPo Reporter Misleads In Claiming Interrogation Double Standard

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Scott Horton Read more at: - Sep. 18 (News Analysis) - This suggests that the message that torture enablers really draw from the West experience is this: Political cards played deftly will foil the impartial administration of justice every time. They may even win you a seat in Congress. Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/18/pincuss-double-standard_n_291801.html

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Art as Resistance

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Dahr Jamail - Sep. 07 (Special Report) - Soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have tough truths to tell, and it has been well demonstrated that the establishment media does not want to broadcast these. Given the lack of an outlet for anti-war voices in the corporate media, many contemporary veterans and active-duty soldiers have embraced the arts as a tool for resistance, communication and healing. They have made use of a wide range of visual and performing arts - through theater, poetry, painting, writing, and other creative expression - to affirm their own opposition to the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Why 'GQ' Doesn't Want Russians To Read Its Story

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Public Radio - By David Folkenflik - Sep. 05 (News Analysis) - Scott Anderson's piece in the September issue of GQ challenges the official line on a series of bombings that killed hundreds of people in 1999 in Russia. Although no issues have been raised to date about the article's accuracy, GQ management is trying to prevent Russians from reading it.

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Fox News host sparks outrage

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Financial Times - By Edward Luce - Sep. 02 (News Analysis) - If the White House is trying to figure how it lost control of the debate over healthcare in August, it could take a look at Glenn Beck’s television and radio ratings. The conservative talk radio host, who also has an hourly slot on Fox News every day, has seen his viewer numbers soar even as opponents have pressed companies to withdraw advertising from the show.

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Novak Without Tears

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Eric Alterman - Aug. 26 (Special Report) - Journalist and television personality Robert Novak died August 18. I think it's time to do him the honor of taking his life's work seriously. I got to know Novak a bit in the late 1980s while writing a magazine profile of him, and another of his then-colleague John McLaughlin while researching a book on the history of punditry. I found myself immune to Novak's charms--as he was to mine--but I don't begrudge the fact that many people in Washington did not. Novak was an extremely popular figure within the capital; and while I extend his close friends and family my sincere sympathy, as a historian of journalism I worry that his myriad personal connections may have the effect of obscuring the historical record with regard to his actions. With that in mind, here are a few aspects of Mr. Novak's career that have received short shrift during the past week:

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Joe Scarborough Is Shocked, Yet Awed by Single-Payer Logic

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By 9 Leslie Savan - Aug. 21 (News) - Something rather remarkable happened on Tuesday's Morning Joe. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York pointed out that the health insurance industry has no clothes, and Joe Scarborough, after first trying to spin it some gossamer threads, broke down and said, By God, you're right, this emperor is a naked money-making machine

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Hyper-local news site EveryBlock bought by MSNBC

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

pressgazette.co.uk - By Conrad Quilty-Harper - Aug. 18 (News Report) - MSNBC.com has bought the US hyper-local news and information aggregator EveryBlock. The site allows users in 15 cities across the US to enter their zip codes (postcodes) and get news, public information, photos and local blogs about their neighbourhood displayed across interactive maps. Everyblock, which has been operating since July 2007, was established by data journalism expert Adrian Holovaty with a $1.1m grant from the Knight Foundation. Holovaty rose to public prominence after designing and launching Chicagocrime.org to chart publicly available crime information onto maps. Local information and news is increasingly being seen as valuable by big web portals. Microsoft’s news and entertainment portal MSN is looking to add UK regional newspaper content to its MSN Local site, integrating papers’ feeds with with its postcode-searchable map. The terms of the Everyblock deal with MSNBC.com were not disclosed, however, reports have claimed the price tag was several million dollars. The company's six full-time employees have all been hired by MSNBC.com, and will remain in the company's Chicago headquarters. MSNBC.com, a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC Universal, said it would continue to operate the site as a distinct brand, "with the same logo and design [and] with the same everyblock.com domain".

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Lou Dobbs Tours Single-Payer Systems Abroad and Realizes, Holy Crap They're Good

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Leslie Savan - Aug. 15 (News Analysis) - Lou Dobbs is a strange man. One day he's railing against "Obamacare," stoking the birther and deather paranoia that an illegitimate president's health care plan will mandate euthanasia. Next day he's practically singing the praises of single-payer healthcare systems 'round the world. It's kind of French of him, but last week, CNN's government-out-of-my-face bloviator began a monthlong, nation-a-night series to "learn from other countries' health care plans."

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The Media Equation: For Murdoch, It’s Try, Try Again

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David Carr - Aug. 10 (News Analysis) - The owner of News Corporation says he wants to go against the grain and “charge for all our news Web sites.”

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For Media, ‘Class War’ Has Wealthy Victims

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - By Radley Glasser, Steve Rendall - Aug. 06 (Investigative Report) - a new FAIR survey shows that within top national media outlets, “class warfare” terminology is almost exclusively employed to characterize as belligerent actions taken on behalf of the non-rich. The result is a biased national discourse that portrays “class war” as an ongoing persecution of the wealthy at the hands of the poor and working class and their populist leaders.

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