Category Archives: Media

Edwards on Hardball last night

Posted on December 13, 2006 by | 1 comment

If you missed the Hardball last night, you can watch it here.
Here is Raleigh News & Observer:
‘Hardball’ not so hard for Edwards:

Likely Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards passed the world leader pop quiz Tuesday night.
He correctly identified the leaders of Canada, Mexico, Iraq, Germany, South Africa and Italy when quizzed by Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball” program.
In fact, Edwards seemed to have little trouble fielding questions, ranging from the war in Iraq to his relative lack of foreign policy experience to his political ties to organized labor, before a live UNC-Chapel Hill crowd and a national TV audience.
“This is not hardball, this is batting practice,” Matthews complained to the audience during a commercial break. “This guy is killing me. He couldn’t do this four years ago.”
Matthews also couldn’t make Edwards, the former senator and vice presidential candidate, tip his hand on whether he plans to run for president in 2008, although it is one of the worst-kept secrets that Edwards is preparing to launch his second try for the White House sometime during the next several weeks.

Political Wire:
Quote of the Day:

“Running before makes you focus on something different. Instead of focusing on how crowds respond to you and what everybody seems to love of you. That’s not the test for being president. The test for being president is are you the best person to occupy the Oval Office and be the leader of the free world? Because literally the future of the world is at stake here. This is not about popularity and excitement.”

MyDD:
John Edwards Hits it Out of the Park
Democratic Underground:
John Edwards is doing an INCREDIBLE job on Hardball !!
My impressions? Compared to two years ago, Edwards is more serious, more comfortable, more mature, more steeled, more confident and more knowledgeable. He sounds less pre-packaged, less rehearsed. While two years ago he would sometimes dodge a question and give an answer on a tangent, now he takes the questions head-on, reframes the questions before answering them (making Tweety look realy bad a couple of times, especially the answer to the question about labor unions which was given in such a nutty rightwing frame) and is not afraid to say what he really thinks. And Elizabeth is brilliant – she put Matthews in place even better than John did. Compare that performance to the guy currently living in the White House…

1 Comment

Posted in Media, Politics

People who should know better…

Posted on December 12, 2006 by | 1 comment

…but they do not.

1 Comment

Posted in Media, Politics

Blogging Professor!

Posted on November 30, 2006 by | Comments Off on Blogging Professor!

Is this the first such thing? A faculty position at UNC school of journalism. From the job ad:

This person should be highly skilled in writing and editing online news, in blogging and in developing news content for the web.

Apply if you think you can and want to do this.

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Posted in Academia, Blogging, Media

NewsTrust

Posted on November 28, 2006 by | Comments Off on NewsTrust

NewsTrust is a news portal that rates the stories by the quality of the journalism, as assessed by readers.

Readers are asked to rate stories based on how fair, balanced, accurate, and important the stories are, along with other criteria. The system has been set up to try and limit gaming of the site and to promote a non-partisan balanced view of the underlying journalism.

Along with the major news-media, the new portal is also rating some of the biggest blogs.
You should register and make it a habit to rate the stories. Also, tell your friends (or blog-readers) to do the same. A good way to spread the news is to go and recommend this DailyKos diary so the thousands of Kossians see it and follow up on it.

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Posted in Media

Where do people find information about evolution?

Posted on November 26, 2006 by | Comments Off on Where do people find information about evolution?

I am sure glad that others have started parsing the numbers of the new report on ‘The Internet as a Resource for News and Information about Science’.
Duane Smith takes a close look at a couple of tables in the report and concludes that, while relatively few people say they get their information on evolution directly from the Bible and Church, many do so indirectly, by beeing steeped in their comunities’ beliefs transmitted by family, friends and neighbors (as well as local and church-run media). Interesting take (and I agree with him on this). What have you found so far?

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Posted in Blogging, Evolution, Media, Religion, Science Education, Science Reporting, Society

Internet as a source of scientific information

Posted on November 24, 2006 by | 2 comments

Pew Internet and American Life Project just issued a new report: The Internet as a Resource for News and Information about Science (pdf). It states that:

Fully 87% of online users have at one time used the internet to carry out research on a scientific topic or concept and 40 million adults use the internet as their primary source of news and information about science.

The report is chockful of statistics of great importance to us science bloggers. For instance:

Each respondent to this survey received questions on one of three specific scientific topics: stem cell research, climate change, and origins of life on Earth. When asked what source they would use first if they needed to learn more about the topic, here is what they said:
67% of those receiving questions about stem cell research said they would turn to the internet first for information on this topic; 11% said the library.
59% of respondents receiving questions about climate change said they would turn to the internet first for information on this topic; 12% said the library.
42% of those answering questions about the origins of life on Earth said they would turn to the internet first for information on this topic; 19% said the library, and 11% said the Bible or church.

Our blogs are indexed with Google and other search engines and will show up on top of searches for scientific information, especially if it is related to recent science news, so these data are important to keep in mind:

87% of stem cell respondents who cited the internet as their first choice for finding out more about their topic said they would use a search engine.
93% of climate change respondents who cited the internet as their first choice for finding out more about their topic said they would use a search engine.
91% of origin of life respondents who cited the internet as their first choice for finding out more about their topic said they would use a search engine.

There is much, much more about the use of online resources, as well as attitudes of internet users toward science. David Warlick and his commenters also look at the data from an educational perspective.
I urge you to dig through the information and post your own thoughts on whatever set of numbers or conclusions you find curious or important.
Update: David Warlick has more.

2 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Media, Science Education, Science News, Science Reporting

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Posted on November 23, 2006 by | 2 comments

My son wants Wii for Hannukkah and he will get it. According to Jonah, it’s good for you in more ways than just training in spatial orientation. You get a physical workout and you get drawn deeper into the game which will, presumably, make violence, aggression, injuries and death more realistic and thus may have the opposite effect of cartoonish effects of older video games or even watching carnage on TV news. You may even start emphatizing and thinking about the meaning of life! Who knows – time will tell.
But, and I did not think of this, Wii may do something more. Brian Russell muses, in two posts, about another Wii potential – replacing a PC! It has an Internet connection and a browser and a bunch of other stuff that makes it a social networking tool. Will Wii-sphere be the next generation’s blogosphere?

2 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Fun, Media

Obligatory readings of the day – on the Media

Posted on November 18, 2006 by | Comments Off on Obligatory readings of the day – on the Media

Glenn and Dave on eliminationist rhetoric and the complicity of the media in it. So, what to do with the media? Glenn describes, Sara prescribes.

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Posted in Media, Politics

Blogs on NPR

Posted on November 12, 2006 by | 1 comment

On The Media is one of my favourite NPR shows and today I was lucky to be in the car for almost the entire show. Today’s show was very “bloggy”. First, they had a report of the election and mentioned the positive impact of the netroots as well as the way Internet was ahead of CNN et al. in posting results (e.g., in Virginia).
Then, Steve Rubel talked about the way large companies can use blogs to connect with their customers.
Then , they had Marc Lynch of Abu Aardvark on , not as a blogger, or a curiosity, but as an expert – the best person to summarize the responses of Middle-Eastern media to the U.S. elections. I think the interviewer was taken aback a little to hear that Al Qaeda wanted Republicans to win contrary to the MSM “conventional wisdom”, i.e., Republican wisdom.
Then, they had a segment in which they did not mention blogs, but the topic is a hot one in the blogosphere perhaps because it is triggered by the way bloggers write – the question of bias. Should MSM journalists openly show their affiliations/biases/leanings or should they try, at all costs, to preserve the appearance of fairness and balance, i.e., should they continue to play the game of ‘he-said-she-said’ and always present two sides to every issue even when one side is clearly wrong?
If that is not enough, Matt Hill Comer will be on State of Things tomorrow at noon and 9pm. Matt has all the info.

1 Comment

Posted in Blogging, Media, North Carolina

Jump on the HealthTrain

Posted on October 31, 2006 by | 3 comments

Check out the freshly unvailed Open Healthcare Manifesto, designed to foster “open media” in healthcare and medicine and to implement “some sort of a new “integrity standard” … needed to help people sort through the junk that openness unfortunately tends to generate.”
To see the details, download the HealthTrain – the Open Healthcare Manifesto (pdf) and the HealthTrain Press Release (pdf)

3 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Media, Medicine

Google News?

Posted on October 31, 2006 by | 3 comments

I have a couple of subscription for Google News e-mail notifications for terms like “circadian” and what-not. This makes me informed fast enough for what I need (i.e., making a decision to blog or not about the news). Usually, I’d get 2-3 new entries for the “circadian” search-term each day (and even less for some other terms). A couple of days ago, I noticed that I am getting dozens. What is interesting that the entries are not from MSM or places like EurekAlert, but from blogs and MySpace!
So, what is the purpose of Google News? If I want to see what all websites have, I’ll use Google Search. If I want to see what bloggers are saying, I use Google Blogsearch. Google News is specifically for seeing what the MSM is saying. So, why did they do this? What is the distinction now between the three search engines?
The only positive I can think of is that my own entries show up there. But that only started about 5 minutes ago when Technorati finally updated my blog there after about 5 months of my whining and complaining to them. So, what is the connection between Technorati and Google? How did that work?

3 Comments

Posted in Blogging, Media

How many things…

Posted on August 1, 2006 by | 4 comments

..are wrong with this article?

4 Comments

Posted in Evolution, Media

Why does Media have to screw up everything it touches?

Posted on July 24, 2006 by | 2 comments

Including screwing with the people who touch themselves for a charitable cause:

“Overall I think a well-intentioned event has been hijacked by a corporation who don’t really care if we have good sex and enjoy masturbation, but just want more viewing figures. I hope people do join in and support the event, but I worry that it’ll invite more sex-negative discussions than stories that encourage masturbation.
The masturbate-a-thon most certainly has had more coverage in one day than it’s got in the past five years that it’s been running. Call me old fashioned, but I preferred it when it truly was about pleasure, education, activism and ‘coming for a cause’. Not as a replacement in Channel 4’s schedule once Big Brother’s finished.”

Read the rest, of course…

2 Comments

Posted in Media, Sex

The Fog of Cable

Posted on July 22, 2006 by | 1 comment

Link found on Ed Cone’s blog: The Fog of Cable:

As someone who lives and breathes Middle East politics and media, I have had the bizarre — and frustrating — experience of watching the current conflict play out on U.S. cable television, and I am reminded once again why many Americans have such a limited — and distorted — view of the world.
———snip————-
There is plenty of room on cable television for politicized talk shows of all stripes. But in allowing — or, rather, ordering — its respected news correspondents to appear on such shows, the networks are trading credibility for ratings and cementing their transition from purveyors of news to citadels of infotainment.
Lost in the fog of hype and self-aggrandizement on the cable segments I saw was much of the subtle complexity of the conflict. Instead, it was too often reduced to the black-hat/white-hat characterization that has guided U.S. policy toward the region.

I guess I am glad I do not watch TV. What I pick up on blogs is probably much better than CNN and makes me less frothing-at-the-mouth mad at the state of the media in this country today. Read the whole thing for some egreggious details of our “journalists'” incompetence in reporting from the Middle East.

1 Comment

Posted in Media