Uncategorized
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Another Dateline Hollywood story reported as fact
How bad is the media at fact-checking? For the third time, an obviously false story from the satirical entertainment news website Dateline Hollywood, which my friend Ben Fritz co-edits, was picked up in the mainstream press. First, a Los Angeles Times op-ed claimed the Reverend Jerry Falwell had blamed Ellen DeGeneres hosting the Emmy Awards
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Charges to be dropped in Duke lacrosse case
ABC News is reporting that the Duke lacrosse case is finally going to be put out of its misery: The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper will announce that he is dismissing all charges against three Duke Lacrosse players, ABC News has learned from sources close to the case. The three players, Reade
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Reporting on “largest tax increase”
The Hill, an insider Capitol Hill newspaper, published a story Friday that reprinted the misleading talking point that the Democratic budget represents “the largest tax increase in American history” without any additional context: GOP leaders Friday used new employment figures showing a job growth in March of 180,000 to attack the Democrats’ budget, which Republicans
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The Thompson surge
Shockingly, the Intrade futures market for 2008 GOP presidential contenders was putting higher odds on Fred Thompson than John McCain a couple of days ago. Here are the current odds, which still have Thompson in a strong third place: -Giuliani – 30.1% -McCain – 19.8% -Thompson – 18.7% -Romney – 17.4% -Gingrich – 4.0% I’ve
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NYT adopts White House spin on Iraq bill
Here’s a great example of a reporter buying into one side’s framing of a debate. In yesterday’s New York Times, Jim Rutenberg defines the battle over attaching a withdrawal timeline to the Iraq emergency funding bill as “a fight over support for the troops”: But as the president has vacationed here, his administration has been
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Rudy Giuliani: Middle East expert
Sunni, Shiite — what’s the difference? Rudy Giuliani doesn’t know. Check out his sophisticated understanding of religion and politics in the Middle East (via Isaac Chotiner at The Plank: As for Iran, Mr. Giuliani said that “in the long term,” it might be “more dangerous than Iraq.” He then casually lumped Iran with Al Qaeda.
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Unger Report: Couric’s “sources”
NPR commentator Brian Unger deconstructs Katie Couric’s interview with John and Elizabeth Edwards, showing how Couric relies on vague constructions such as “some people” and “others” as the source for her questions. It’s a classic pathology of “objective” journalism — journalists have to pretend not to have their own voice, and thus have to provide
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Is Edwards moving up?
The subscription-only Hotline newsletter says John Edwards is surging: Who said there’s no room in the WH ’08 Dem race for Obama and Edwards? That CW, according to the latest Hotline/Diageo poll, is wrong. Over the past month, Edwards’s favorability bumped up 15 percentage points. While Clinton and Obama are still at the top of
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Revisiting the experience question
I’ve been questioning the conventional wisdom that Hillary is the most “experienced” candidate in the Democratic presidential primary for a while now (see here, here, and here). She has a long history of involvement in politics and policy, but her experience as an elected official is not any more extensive than that of Barack Obama
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Infinite regress blog-style
Talk about meta-culture: Over at his other digs Scott responds to Ann Althouse’s YouTube video of herself watching American Idol, by Youtubing a video of himself watching Ann Althouse watching American Idol. Ladies and gentlemen; place your bets on how close we can get to infinite regress before it’s all over … This takes me