"Me at CNN was not an easy fit."

"The first month was tumultuous with several tumultuous times throughout. I liked to think of myself as job security for the public relations department. About the only thing the far right and far left could agree on was that I did not belong at CNN."

Erick Erickson, no longer the right-wing guy at CNN. Assuming CNN needs a right-wing guy "for public relations," what kind of right-wing guy should it be... and why did CNN think Erick Erickson was the guy in the first place? I suspect a bias about the right caused the choice, but that he was never really the right choice. Nothing against Erickson, but what makes TV talking-heads shows work?

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Take the exam in Althouse's on-line class in media bias.

First, read this post about Dana Milbank's description of the way Senator Marco Rubio looked as he waited his turn to speak about the bipartisan immigration plan. Note the literary techniques he employs. He seems to be describing what he sees, but I implied that his descriptions revealed bias, and, indeed, that Milbank would like to destroy Marco Rubio.

Now, here's a video clip showing Marco Rubio giving his presentation. Feel free to listen to what he says, but I want you to concentrate on Senator Chuck Schumer, who can be seen at the left of the screen. Observe any gestures or expressions, because the assignment will involve describing him, deploying literary techniques of the sort we saw in Milbank's description of Rubio.



Here's the assignment. Write 2 descriptions of Schumer, in the style of Dana Milbank's description of Marco Rubio.

1. You are the equivalent of Milbank, but attuned to the goals of the Republican Party. You would like to impede the advancement of Chuck Schumer.

2. You are a Milbank-style columnist at a place like The Washington Post, and you'd like to further the political career of Senator Schumer.

Cast a critical eye on your work. Are your 2 descriptions equivalent? They should be equally accurate, equally presentable as journalism, equally in service to your political agenda.

What have you learned from this exercise? Has your respect for Milbank grown or shrunken? Explain.

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"The journalism in these pages will strive to be free of party ideology or partisan bias..."

"... although it will showcase passionate writing and will continue to wrestle with the primary questions about our society."

Our purpose is not simply to tell interesting stories, but to always ask why these stories matter and tie their reporting back to our readers. We hope to discern the hidden patterns, to connect the disparate facts, and to find the deeper meaning, a layer of understanding beyond the daily headlines.

So writes Chris Hughes about the redesign of The New Republic, which I was cranky about yesterday, because it kicked off with a kissy interview with Barack Obama.

I must say, I'd never paid any attention to Chris Hughes before, and I didn't yesterday until pushed by my commenters. On the evidence of the interview he and Franklin Foer did with the President, I saw him as another media suckup doing Democratic Party politics under cover of journalism. Seeing this "free of party ideology or partisan bias" business now only inclines me to scoff. If that's what you wanted as your brand, why did you lead off with that interview?

But I realize I need to get up to speed on this Chris Hughes character. I didn't even bother to name him in yesterday's post, and I've only just made a tag for him now. Sorry, I didn't bother watching "The Social Network." To the extent that I follow celebrities, I'm not particularly drawn to new media businessmen. I can keep track of Mark Zuckerberg up to a point, but I've never paid attention to the lesser Facebookians.

Here's a HuffPo article from last March about Hughes's purchase of TNR, noting that he was "a key player in President Obama's online organizing efforts in 2008." Why would we expect this man — who's only 29, by the way — to strive to be free of party ideology or partisan bias? I've got to assume the striving is toward seeming to be free of party ideology and partisan bias, because that's what journalists always say they are doing when they have ideological and partisan goals.

Based on that interview with Obama, I'd say Hughes is not striving that hard or he's not good at what he's striving to do or — most likely — he only wants to appeal to Democrats, so he only wants to do enough to seem to be free of party ideology and partisan bias to Democrats. Is this enough to make our target audience feel good about the nourishment they're getting from this source? The good feeling is some combination of seeming like professional journalism while satisfying their emotional needs that are intertwined their political ideology and love of party.

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"Can you tell us a little bit about how you've gone about intellectually preparing for your second term as president?"

The New Republic promotes its "redesign" in email that says I "signed up to get an early look at." (I did?) I'm sent to this interview with Obama, which takes so absurdly long to load that I go off and write other posts before rediscovering the open tab. I see Obama's smiling eyes peeking out over the top of the headline "Barack Obama is Not Pleased." I pause and contemplate 2 things: 1. Do the redesigners not understand the rules of capitalization? and, 2. Did they intend to allude to the famous Queen Victoria quote "We are not amused" — that is, did they intend to imply that Obama uses the royal "we"?

The subtitle is "The president on his enemies, the media, and the future of football," so I guess that's what he's "not pleased" about. I can see not being pleased by one's enemies, but how can he not be pleased by the media? The media fawn over him. What more can he want? And the future of football... I guess TNR threw that in to signal that there's going to be some fun somewhere on this page that took so long to load.

I scroll down past 6 paragraphs of introductory text to get to the actual interview, and that's the first question: "Can you tell us a little bit about how you've gone about intellectually preparing for your second term as president?" See what I mean about fawning? My first bite of the "redesign" is thoroughly cloying. It seems to be cloying even to Obama. He says:

I'm not sure it's an intellectual exercise as much as it is reminding myself of why I ran for president and tapping into what I consider to be the innate common sense of the American people.

I wish I could read what went through his head when he heard that question, before he said, in so many words, that's a stupid question. I think it was something like: These elite media guys are so in love with their idea of me as an intellectual. 

That first question was asked by Chris Hughes. It took 2 fawning elite media guys to interview Obama. The other one is Franklin Foer, and his first question is: "How do you speak to gun owners in a way that doesn't make them feel as if you're impinging upon their liberty?" Later, FF comes up with:

Sticking with the culture of violence, but on a much less dramatic scale: I'm wondering if you, as a fan, take less pleasure in watching football, knowing the impact that the game takes on its players.

Wait. We were talking about the "culture of violence" when we talked about gun rights and we're continuing to talk about "the culture of violence" when we talk about football?! Noted.

By the way, credit to FF for extracting from Obama that he shoots guns "all the time," "up at Camp David," where "we do skeet shooting." I never hear about Obama going to Camp David. Where are the photos of Obama skeet shooting at Camp David?

There's some mystery within that pronoun "we."

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Harvard prof isn't advocating gestating a Neanderthal.

He's just saying it's "technically possible someday" and "we need to start talking about it today."

[George M.] Church said he has done perhaps 500 interviews about his research during more than two decades and this is the first one to spiral out of control quite like this.

But he said, “I’m not going to run away. … I want to use it as an educational moment to talk about journalism and technology.”

I bet Neanderthals would be better journalists. Let's get some, pronto, to help us with our endless fuckups.

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Screw-up at The Atlantic leads to inane corporate memo.

Perhaps you noticed the screw-up: The Atlantic ran an article promoting Scientology — "David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year" — with a little "sponsored content" notation. Jumped on, they took it down and apologized. Now we get this inane corporate memo from the company's president M. Scott Havens:

We ran a “native advertising” campaign for a new advertiser that, while properly labeled as Sponsor Content, was in my opinion inconsistent with the strategy and philosophy for which this program is intended. In this case, we did not adequately work with the advertiser to create a content program that was in line with our brand. 

They meant to be more devious. Nice philosophy!

In addition, because we had not fully thought through the issues around commenting on Sponsor Content, we made some mistakes trying to moderate the commenting thread. The general media climate also played a role here.

No further explanation of what that "general media climate" is supposed to be. But one thing is clear: Any blame should be general:

One important note for everyone: casting blame on any group or any individual is both unfair and simply not what we do at The Atlantic. And we most certainly should not speak to the press or use social media to attack our organization or our colleagues. We are a team that rises and falls together.

Something makes me think intra-Scientology memos look like that. Well, clearly, The Atlantic is deeply into the media game of profiting from propaganda. It's great that they slipped up so obviously. Be on guard, though, because they are bent on getting it right, which is to say, doing it so you don't notice.

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"We said, hey, let's do something ridiculous."

"Let's go shoot guns."

ADDED: Via a Columbia Journalism Review "Pass the #popcorn" item, with a lot of intra-journalism analysis. 

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Crazy NRA approach to school violence...

... is supported by 55% of Americans.

By "crazy," I mean that the elite media went all out to portray the suggestion as insane:

Here's the NYT editorial, which is entitled "The N.R.A. Crawls From Its Hidey Hole."

[W]e were stunned by Mr. LaPierre’s mendacious, delusional, almost deranged rant.

Mr. LaPierre looked wild-eyed at times....

We cannot imagine trying to turn the principals and teachers who care for our children every day into an armed mob....

I wonder what the support for LaPierre's proposal would be if he'd been given a respectful hearing in the press?

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"Alligator found guarding 34 pounds of pot in a Northern California home."

"[Sheriff's Sgt. J.D. ] Nelson said [Assif ] Mayar apparently acquired the alligator, named 'Mr. Teeth,' in 1996 to commemorate the death of rapper Tupac Shakur."

It all makes sense. If you had an alligator, you'd name it Mr. Teeth. If you had a big supply of marijuana and an alligator, you'd use the alligator to guard the marijuana. If you wanted to "commemorate the death" of Tupac Shakur, you'd acquire an alligator. I don't even know why banalities of this kind make it into the newspaper. You might say, well, maybe they had an exciting picture they wanted to scare us with. Actually, they have 2 pictures. I especially liked this one:

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Al Jazeera hands Al Gore the second-chakra-releasing sum of $100 million.

Wow! Here's this failed, low-rated cable TV project of Al's. What is Al Jazeera buying? It's going to close down Current TV and only seems to want access to the American TVs that receive Current TV, if the people watching those TVs wanted to watch Current TV, which they obviously don't. There are many, many more spots on the cable TV dial, so why buy Gore's channel? Al Jazeera paid $500 million total (Gore's share is 20%). That seems like a crazy amount of money just to get onto cable TV. The idea is — as the NYT puts it — "to convince Americans that it is a legitimate news organization, not a parrot of Middle Eastern propaganda or something more sinister."

How hard is it to take over an existing slot in cable TV?

News channels financed by Britain, China and Russia are especially hungry for American cable deals. To date, the BBC has had the most success; its BBC World News channel is now available in about 25 million homes thanks to a deal struck last month with Time Warner Cable.

But the takeover of Current brings Al Jazeera to the front of the line. 

But did BBC or those other channels ever try to purchase an existing channel's access? Would $500 million be the going rate? Did Al Jazeera negotiate only with Gore's channel or did they try to get a better deal from some other channel with pathetically low ratings?

In recent weeks, Mr. Gore personally lobbied the distributors that carry Current on the importance of Al Jazeera, according to people briefed on the talks who were not authorized to speak publicly.

So... Al Jazeera was buying the former Vice President's advocacy.

Distributors can sometimes wiggle out of their carriage deals when channels change hands. 

How long is that carriage deal? $500 million worth of long? And it's not even guaranteed? It could turn into nothing?!

Most [distributors] consented to the sale, but Time Warner Cable did not...

Time Warner Cable had previously warned that it might drop Current because of its low ratings. It took advantage of a change-in-ownership clause and said in a terse statement Wednesday night, “We are removing the service as quickly as possible.”

So Time Warner — which serves 12 million of those 40 million homes — is already out. Did Al Jazeera get hoodwinked by the Oscar-and-Nobel-Prize-winning former Veep? He did what he could for them, "personally lobb[ying] the distributors that carry Current on the importance of Al Jazeera." How much more can you buy in this world? You got Al!

Hey, I just thought up a slogan Al Jazeera can use as it promotes itself to the American people: You Can Call Us Al.

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"Under the agreement, tax rates would jump to 39.6 percent from 35 percent for individual incomes over $400,000 and couples over $450,000..."

"... while tax deductions and credits would start phasing out on incomes as low as $250,000, a clear win for President Obama, who campaigned on higher taxes for the wealthy."

Is that a "clear win"? Good lord, whatever happens, the NYT will spin it as a win for Obama. I thought his number was $250,000 for couples, and now, it's way up at $450,000. That should be called a clear compromise. How hard it must be for the Republicans to compromise, when even clear compromises are declared clear wins for the other side.

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