Category Archives: Media

Rupertgate Goes Thermonuclear

Breaking at The Guardian: Sean Hoare, the reporter who blew the whistle on phone hacking at News of the World, has been found dead.

This is the big tipping point: “Rupertgate” has now gone thermonuclear. Cue the fat lady for Rupert Murdoch — and News Corporation itself.

If the New York Post weren’t owned by Murdoch, tomorrow’s headline would be “NEWS CORPSE”.

Restarting the “Countdown”: Keith Olbermann Tacks Left

“Countdown with Keith Olbermann” is back on the air after its host walked out on MSNBC a little more than five months ago. The most notable difference is that Olbermann is letting his political hair down in the program’s Current TV incarnation, revealing himself as far more liberal than he was on MSNBC. In a Special Comment following a segment with contributor Michael Moore, Olbermann laid out the underlying principle of “Countdown”:

Continue reading Restarting the “Countdown”: Keith Olbermann Tacks Left

Blast from the Past: Henry Hadley Conducts Wagner

Henry Hadley, remembered today as a late Romantic composer, leads the New York Philharmonic in Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture, minus a huge cut in the introduction (hat tip: Richard Schneider). Keep in mind that at the time Willem Mengelberg was well into his tenure as the orchestra’s music director. Here is yet more evidence that puts the lie to the assertion that Toscanini built the Philharmonic into a virtuoso orchestra.

It can’t happen soon enough

Check out Lloyd Grove’s latest piece at The Daily Beast, “Is [Roger] Ailes Finished at Fox?” It follows on the heels of Grove’s Saturday column and this Sunday New York Times profile of Ailes. One factor that Grove neglects to mention in his newest piece is Ailes’s latest project, the laughable failure that is FOX Business Channel. Bank on this: within two months of Ailes being out the door at NewsCorp, you’ll see at least two of FOX News Channel’s “marquee” names quickly expunged from a cable outlet that will get serious about actual journalism agreeing to an amicable parting from the cable outlet, perhaps even joining Ailes at his next Media Mordor.

Joan Walsh Dares Say It

Via the incomparable Bob Somerby comes this gem written by Joan Walsh, echoing exactly what American Politics Journal‘s founding editor, Jeff Koopersmith, was saying well over a decade ago (Bob’s emphases preserved):

“The Clinton Tapes” makes clear that from start to finish, President Clinton was besieged by a vicious just-say-no GOP abetted by the perversely, inexplicably, cruelly anti-Clinton leaders of the so-called liberal media—from the New York Timeslame crusades against Whitewater and Chinese donors and Wen Ho Lee, to the integrity-free “opinion” journalism by Maureen Dowd and, sadly, Frank Rich, to a whole host of other liberal media characters who couldn’t shake their feeling that Clinton was a fraud, a poseur, a hillbilly, a cynic. Their trashy eight-year oeuvre will likely go down in history as the most spectacularly malevolent and misguided White House coverage ever —and politically costly, since it also encompassed Vice President Al Gore and probably made George W. Bush president in 2000.

Read Joan’s erudite takedown of your media here, and Bob Somerby’s analysis here.

[Crossposted to APJ.]