Category Archives: The Media

Mary Anne Franks Profiled in Ocean Drive

Mary Anne FranksMy colleague Mary Anne Franks is the subject of an unusual (for a law professor) profile in the current issue of Ocean Drive magazine. For those unfamiliar with Ocean Drive, it is a big thick glossy thing aimed squarely at the handmaidens of the plutocracy. The magazine celebrates Miami’s (and especially Miami Beach’s) moneyed party-goers, and is stuffed with ads for wildly expensive clothing and jewelery. In between the ads there are little articles about photogenic local celebutantes and charity party-goers. As far as I know, in 20 years in Miami I have never attended an event covered by Ocean Drive, but then again I’m hardly a regular reader. The thing does appear in the mail at my house — I’m guessing I got on their mailing list by subscribing to the Economist, which says something about either the Economist or Ocean Drive‘s demographic assumptions.

Anyway, Mary Anne is not Ocean Drive‘s covergirl — that’s a Bond girl — but she is the background for the table of contents, which must be the next best thing, and the subject of a writeup that begins, “Mary Anne Franks could shatter your kneecap if she wanted to” and goes on to discuss her expertise in Krav Maga, an Israeli martial art; it also touches on her expertise as a feminist legal thinker.

Before joining the Miami Law faculty, Mary Anne Franks was a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2007. She received her D.Phil in 2004 and her M.Phil in 2001 from Oxford University, where she studied on a Rhodes Scholarship. Mary Anne’s latest article is How to Feel Like a Woman, or, Why Punishment Is a Drag, which is forthcoming in the UCLA Law Review.

Posted in The Media, U.Miami | Leave a comment

Couldn’t Resist

A request for a correction in The New York Times:

Article Headline: Rewinding History, Bush Museum Lets You Decide

Date Published: 4/21/13, Print (National Edition, p. A1)

Phrase in Question: “As president, he rarely had a chance to rest….”

Your Concern (please limit to 300 words):

In the page A10 continuation of the front-page article in today’s paper by Peter Baker, “Rewinding History, Bush Museum Lets You Decide”, Mr. Baker writes,

“As president, he [Bush] rarely had a chance to rest….”

In fact, George W. Bush spent 32 months at his ranch (490 days) or Camp David (487 days) — an average of four months away every year, according the the Washington Post’s POTUS tracker (as cited at http://theweek.com/bullpen/column/235844/deconstructing-the-5-most-ridiculous-myths-about-barack-obama).

I understand Presidents sometimes take their work with them when they travel, but I submit that there were plenty of chances to rest in those 977 days.

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Exxon Claims It Doesn’t Hate Children

Exxon hated this video by Exxon Hates Your Children so much that Exxon threatened “legal action” against TV stations in Arkansas who had planned to run it as a paid ad.

Even assuming that the ad is wrong, and Exxon doesn’t hate our children, what would the nature of the claim be? I thought almost no states permitted claims alleging a corporation was libeled?

Update: Crude censorship on Arkansas oil spill story

Posted in The Media | 3 Comments

When Poverty Isn’t News

My brother’s Neiman Reports article It Can’t Happen Here: Why is there so little coverage of Americans who are struggling with poverty? throws down the gauntlet:

Nearly 50 million people—about one in six Americans—live in poverty, defined as income below $23,021 a year for a family of four. And yet most news organizations largely ignore the issue. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism indexed stories in 52 major mainstream news outlets from 2007 through the first half of 2012 and, according to Mark Jurkowitz, the project’s associate director, “in no year did poverty coverage even come close to accounting for as little as one percent of the news hole. It’s fair to say that when you look at that particular topic, it’s negligible.”

This clearly has intrigued NYT Public Editor Margaret Sullivan who writes A New Focus on Poverty Raises a Question About Times Coverage. And the NY Times is surely better than many on this issue.

Posted in Dan Froomkin, The Media | 5 Comments

Talk Radio is as Real and Honest as Professional Wrestling?

Continuing today’s theme of me discovering things everyone else already knows, I just learned that there’s an entire industry devoted to providing actors to be fake call-in guests to talk radio shows. If I read Daily Kos more regularly, I would have learned this back in July.

Of course, just because some programs do it, doesn’t mean all do, or even that any given one does it. But enough do it to support a business model providing the fake callers.

Posted in The Media | 5 Comments

This Is Good

The five states of grief in the Fox News universe cartoon by Nick Anderson.

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Romney Lights Small Fire Under Bridge With Media (Updated)

Romney’s campaign announced Saturday that it would block the news media from covering the event, which will be held at the King David Hotel. The campaign’s decision to close the fundraiser to the press violates the ground rules it negotiated with news organizations in April, when Romney wrapped up the Republican nomination and began opening some of his finance events to the news media.

Under the agreement, a pool of wire, print and television reporters can cover every Romney fundraiser held in public venues, including hotels and country clubs. The campaign does not allow media coverage of fundraisers held in private residences.

Romney has a history of delivering different messages to his donors when reporters are not present to hear them. At a closed-press fundraiser in Florida this spring, reporters from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, without Romney’s knowledge, overheard the candidate outline new tax policy proposals and suggest that he might dramatically downsize the Department of Education and eliminate the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

– The Washington Post, Romney bans media from Jerusalem fundraiser, violating pre-established protocol.

If he keeps this up, the press could turn on him. After all, this is the in-the-tank Washington Post and they’re suggesting he’s two-faced.

UPDATE (7/29): They caved: Romney campaign changes mind, allows press into fund-raiser. Bad move– now the press are going to say Romney’s weak. Cf. Romney Starts Another Painful Week.

Posted in 2012 Election, The Media | 1 Comment