Category Archives: The Media

Jack Shafer in Slate, Behold how little substance NPR's Cokie Roberts can pack into four minutes of airtime suggests it's time for NPR to replace Cokie Roberts with actual content.

Actually he's too kind: Roberts isn't bad just because she's vacuous and boring, but also because she so frequently recites GOP talking points without editing or contextualizing. (This is not surprising if you know her maiden name and family history.)

I've vowed not to give to NPR again until they replace Roberts and the almost as useless Juan Williams. I don't require an unbiased commentator — heck, bias can be more fun some time — and certainly don't require one I agree with (that can be boring). But I'd like one who shows some sign of having done some thinking or some investigation. Almost any major political blogger would be better.

I was disappointed in the lax editorial standards that allowed former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer to use your pages (George in Real Life) to lie to the public, unrebutted, yet again.

Mr. Fleischer is quoted as saying, “When Bill Clinton left office, he was a pariah.”

In fact, President Clinton left office with the highest approval ratings of any post-WW II President, something on the order of 66%. Any simple web search would have revealed this.

I think you owed your readers this fact — especially as it supports the suggestion, made later regarding a different assertion, that die-hard Bush fans are “delusional”.

Please invest in fact-checkers.

A. Michael Froomkin
Professor of Law
University of Miami
Coral Gables, FL

Any point in sending it?

[4:50pm – light editing]

There's been a lot of talk lately about whether the Miami Herald has a financial future. They keep firing folks and shrinking the paper. Not surprisingly, more and more people are not buying it any more, which means less money from a shrinking pool of advertisers which means…

What's most amazing about all this is that Herald keeps shooting itself in the foot by publishing a pretty boring newspaper. That's especially odd in this town, where there is so much scope for some good muckraking journalism, as demonstrated by feisty local blogs like Eye on Miami.

I've suggested before that the Herald could radically up its game by hiring some local bloggers, or licensing their content. But not only is the Herald not interested in that, it's erring in the other direction.

Consider EYE ON MIAMI: Miami Herald redacts Associated Press article highlighting our blog … by gimleteye:

On Sunday, the Herald reprinted the AP story on foreclosures in Homestead whose original version appeared in many newspapers around the nation and featured our blog. The lengthy national story by former Miami New Times and St. Pete Times journalist Tamara Lush featured the foreclosure crisis and included the view we expound here, on Eyeonmiami. The Herald version on the weekend, printed in the Neighbors section, redacted the AP segment of the story that featured Eyeonmiami and, specifically, my views of the crisis.

I suspect local pique: the unwillingness newspapers often have to acknowledge the work of competitors. The Herald will need to get over that, big time, if it wants to flourish.

The world financial system is in turmoil, the US is two wars, but our Media has its eye on the big news, Woman buys used couch and finds cat living inside.

No, it's not the Onion, it's the AP.

In my Sunday paper, this story — Kansas Governor Accepts Offer as Health Secretary — appears deep deep in the “A” section…on the same page as the obituaries.

Is the NYT making a joke about the HHS being a graveyard for political careers and archly suggesting the same fate awaits Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, or does the Times just think HHS and health care reform is deadly boring?

I'm on local radio this morning — about five seconds on WIOD 610 AM — talking about Facebook. It ran at 7:35 this morning and last night they said it would probably run several times during the morning cycle.