These two passages are part of the same Margaret Wente column;
If Michaëlle Jean agrees to give Stephen Harper a second chance, she’ll put him on a short leash. I like that image. After all, he’s been a naughty puppy. He peed all over Parliament, then bared his teeth.
[…]
This business has become embarrassing. Remember when we used to ridicule the Americans for having a political culture that was moronic, juvenile and destructive?
“But the reason I would not want to talk to anyone is because our safety was actually compromised by CNN, which broadcast where we were. The terrorists were watching CNN and they came down from where they were in a lift after hearing about us on television.”
Heritage Minister James Moore has warned CBC executives that excessive spending on hotels, theatre tickets, and charity dinners “does not sit well” with Canadians, and has asked the Crown corporation’s board of directors to rein in the spending.
John Cruickshank has resigned from the top job at CBC News to take the position of publisher of the Toronto Star.
h/t to Dan C.
Famous Last Words: “Ratings don’t matter, profitability does…”
Finally – the addressing root causes.
More! Sun-Times Media Group Inc. disclosed late Tuesday the pending departure of a number of executives and directors and said the struggling Chicago publishing concern intends to stop reporting financial results to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“But what about all the Obama gear that newspapers from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post are selling? Can you really hawk Obama T-shirts, coffee mugs, framed front pages and maintain …
… any sense of journalistic impartiality?”
“The news industry has deliberately alienated anything up to half its potential audience, as seen by the comments on here. Has there ever been an industry which committed commercial suicide in this way, turning its former customers into active enemies?” *
In* boardrooms across the industry, media executives are meeting with media experts to hash out yet another strategy, and yet more innovations to address their falling fortunes, every last one of them invested in the unshakable belief that the internet is burying them because it’s faster – as though the only difference between shit and sunshine is the speed at which they travel.
“It used to be that a handful of editors could decide what was news-and what was not. They acted as sort of demigods. If they ran a story, it became news. If they ignored an event, it never happened. Today editors are losing this power. The Internet, for example, provides access to thousands of new sources that cover things an editor might ignore. And if you aren’t satisfied with that, you can start up your own blog and cover and comment on the news yourself. Journalists like to think of themselves as watchdogs, but they haven’t always responded well when the public calls them to account.”
To make his point, Murdoch criticized the media reaction after bloggers debunked a “60 Minutes” report by former CBS anchor, Dan Rather, that President Bush had evaded service during his days in the National Guard.
“Far from celebrating this citizen journalism, the establishment media reacted defensively. During an appearance on Fox News, a CBS executive attacked the bloggers in a statement that will go down in the annals of arrogance. ’60 Minutes,’ he said, was a professional organization with ‘multiple layers of checks and balances.’ By contrast, he dismissed the blogger as ‘a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.’ But eventually it was the guys sitting in their pajamas who forced Mr. Rather and his producer to resign.
“Mr. Rather and his defenders are not alone,” he continued. “A recent American study reported that many editors and reporters simply do not trust their readers to make good decisions. Let’s be clear about what this means. This is a polite way of saying that these editors and reporters think their readers are too stupid to think for themselves.”
Bill O’Reilly and Marvin Kalb discuss journalism, commentary, and The O’Reilly Factor.
mp3 file
Krista Erickson resurfaces… on the CBC’s “broadcast and journalistic standards” beat.
Background: Pablogate
“You got a
letter from Ryerson this morning.”
“Ryerson? What is it?”
“It’s a big building where students go to be taught by journalism professors who are incapable of fact-checking, but that’s not important now.”
Looks like he picked the wrong week to quit getting his “heart ripped out” by right-wing bloggers.
“No one’s immune,” said one staffer, who called the mood “extremely grim.
Suicide note at the Washington Post.
Update – So much for transparency. Original link now behind a subscription wall, but you can get the gist of it here.
“… not a memory book service”.
Update – some are having trouble accessing that link, so here’s another.
Alan Mutter, Nov.2; – “As soon as the election is over, the Washington bureaus and national desks at most newspapers, magazines and networks are almost sure to be dramatically reduced by their parent companies to offset the sustained declines they have been suffering in advertising sales.”
MediaBistro, Nov.6
[NBC News’ DC bureau chief] Whitaker told staffers that, if anyone’s thinking of retiring, to please reconsider taking the buyout package. Staffers have one week to decide.
Via
Related – “Our job, as a branch plant of our American head office, will be to provide Canadians with objective news analysis of the glorious presidency of Barack Obama, compared to the disappointing prime ministership of Stephen Harper.”
