Category Archives: The Media

Herald Editorial Page Compounds Errors on Home Insurance

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

The Miami Herald doubled down today on its failure to address the shortcomings of undercapitalized, undiversified newly minted under-regulated Florida home insurance companies. (See Citizens Insurance May Be Bad, But Consider the Alternatives for yesterday's installment.)

On the editorial page today, the Herald starts off well in Storm warning: Prop up insurance noting that “the system for insuring homes and businesses against disaster remains badly flawed.” And this is good too:

Neither Citizens nor the CAT fund has sufficient cash on hand — nor enough borrowing power — to meet the huge outlays required by the proverbial one-in-100-years storm. The result would be harsh rates on Florida homeowners to make up for the shortfall.

But then we go off the rails:

The picture isn't completely grim. Since the start of 2008, a record number of policies — 500,000 — have been taken out of Citizens by newly formed insurance companies. That's a good sign, but Citizens remains the largest state-run insurance pool in the country.

No, it's not a good sign at all if the companies writing those policies are not safe and sound. And there's no reason to think that most of them are anything like it.

Why is the Herald so badly missing the boat on this issue?

Posted in Econ & Money, Florida, The Media | 1 Comment

Unarmed, This Time

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

The ultra-rightist mob had a demonstration in DC this weekend. Although organizers predicted a huge turnout, and some partisans claimed over a million, reports are that there was in fact something in the mid-five figures. So it wasn't a big crowd by DC standards — maybe 30-50% the size of the anti-war rally in 2005 that got almost no media coverage.

This rally, though, got front-page treatment. In addition to having a cable network as a sponsor, this group of protesters had two other advantages: they're overwhelmingly white, and they're scary. Anti-war protesters of this decade have worked within the system, and mostly it has ignored them. (Contrast to the anti-globalism protesters, who have had a violent fringe, and have enjoyed violent police preemption and reaction.) The teabaggers act in a way that makes you think shouting at meetings is only the start.

unarmed.jpg

(Source: Josh Nelson)

Imagine if anti-Iraq-war protesters had carried signs with such a whiff of violence? The media would have crucified them as the second coming of the SLA, Baader-Meinhof, and the Weathermen. But these guys? Salt of the earth, of course.

Posted in Politics: US, The Media | 28 Comments

CNN Refuses to Air Ad Attacking Lou Dobbs

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Here's the ad that CNN refuses to air: CNN's Lou Dobbs Problem:

In the past this sort of corporate use of its control over a press or an outlet made some sense: it stifled the message. Nowadays, with so many channels on TV and the Internet besides, all it does is add fuel to the fire. If I were CNN I'd take Media Matters's money and laugh all the way to the bank.

Posted in The Media | 2 Comments

Journalism Ethics MIA

Posted on August 1, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

Yet again, Glenn Greenwald not only anticipates what I was going to say, he does it better: GE's silencing of Olbermann and MSNBC's sleazy use of Richard Wolffe – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com deconstructs today's NYT article reporting that GE & Murdoch News got together and agreed to clamp down on blowhards O'Reilly and Olbermann.

It's especially amazing that nowhere in Brian Stelter's article reporting that a pair of owner/publishers of news/opinion TV shows agreed secretly to muzzle them is there any hint that there might be an journalism ethics issue. No one from a J-school is quoted.

Who muzzled the New York Times? And is the most depressing answer that it muzzled itself.

(Bonus amazement: Charlie Rose either lied about the events he witnessed or didn't understand their significance any more than did Brian Stelter.)

Posted in The Media | 3 Comments

A Real Reporter Goes to Gitmo

Posted on July 8, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

The St. Petersburg Times should be proud — their report on Gitmo, Meg Laughlin's Behind Guantanamo's walls, there are more walls, shows a lot more signs of real reporting than much of what you get in more famous newspapers.

Example:

When we ask the head psychologist, who calls himself “Eldorado” after the car, about the effects of prolonged solitary confinement, he says: “You see a lot of depression and anxiety.”

But Smo interrupts: “There is no solitary confinement here. They just spend a lot of time alone in their cells.”

To make the point that the detainees want nothing to do with us, the head guard at Camp 5 takes us to a window where he opens a blind so we can see a detainee sitting about 25 feet away. The inmate immediately ties a black plastic bag to a fence to block our view.

“You see how they don't want the media looking at them?” he says.

But we realize we are looking at a latrine and we have been invited to watch them defecate.

Example:

By January 2008, when Zanetti was there, detainees who weren't designated as “maximum-security prisoners” were coming up with trivial complaints that showed how spoiled they were.

To make his point, Zanetti read to me from a daily briefing from the first week of April 2008: “Prisoner 765 wants onions and parsley on his salad; 845 wants a better detainee newsletter; 632 wants a Bowflex machine to build his abs.”

But, according to the master list of prisoner names and numbers provided by the Pentagon, prisoners 632 and 845 left Guantanamo in 2006, two years before the complaints, and the number 765 was never assigned to a prisoner. I left Zanetti several phone messages seeking clarification, but he hasn't called back.

Well done, Ms. Laughlin. Don't expect a job on the Washington Post.

Posted in Guantanamo, The Media | 4 Comments

The Miami Herald Doubles Down on Boring

Posted on May 10, 2009 by Michael Froomkin

As if it wasn't boring enough already, the Miami Herald picks one of its more boring columnists to be editorial page director: Columnist Myriam Marquez to lead Herald editorial board.

It doesn't help that she's also a don't rock the boat moderate conservative. Not someone to offend many readers, certs, but not someone to sell many papers either.

In a further sign of Not Getting It, consider this quote from the article announcing the appointment,

“The blogs are great — they offer quick snapshots of the prevailing winds — but only the board can look at the big issues like the future of the Everglades and money for education and thoroughly research them.''

Oh yeah? How come I learn more (and sooner!) about area water issues on this blog than in the Herald?

How come I learn more (and sooner) about the candidates in local elections from blogs than I do from the Herald?

How come almost all the columnists (except Fred Grimm, Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry when we can get him) and 100% of the editorials in the Herald are boring and uninformative?

This isn't the sort of appointment that is going to fix the real problems at the Herald. Oh for the days of Jim DeFede and Ana Menendez…

Posted in The Media | 1 Comment