The Opposite of Tucker

As a rookie journalist, I have role models in the field who inspire and inform me. And then I have reverse role models who I can't stand but still check on from time to time, just to remind myself what not to do.  One such person is Tucker Carlson.

For example:

Earlier this week, [Carlson's website] the Daily Caller reported that the Environmental Protection Agency was "asking taxpayers" to pay for "230,000 new bureaucrats," at a cost of $21 billion, to implement new rules to control greenhouse gas emissions. Given that the agency currently employs 17,000, this seemed like a rather shocking revelation. Naturally, this factoid whipped Fox News and conservative blogs into a frenzy; they pointed to it as evidence that the Obama administration is ape-crazy out of control. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a foe of climate change action, enthusiastically cited it.

But there was a problem: This was not true. [...] The EPA was defending a rule that would allow it to limit the number of pollution sources it must regulate, so the agency wouldn't have to expand its workforce to such an absurd level.

See, perfect media ethics question. "Faced with this dilemma, do you a) print a correction and apology and learn to read government reports more carefully, or b) deny you made a mistake, attack anyone who criticises you and create a viral Internet scandal that drags on for weeks?"

If you're Tucker Carlson, you pick B. If you're a decent journalist, you make fun of Tucker Carlson.

Drunk Ron Paul Fan

I need to not run around showing this to every Libertarian I can get my hands on. That would be rude.



Constitution. Read it. Live by it.

Televising the Revolution

One surprising result of my journalism studies is a shift in perspective when it comes to social media versus the mainstream press.

Today I was involved in a Twitter debate over the protest that's going on in Lower Manhattan. Hundreds of activists have gathered on Wall Street to protest economic disparity and the principle of "profit over and above all else".

The protesters are copying the Arab Spring by using social media like Twitter and YouTube to spread word about what's going on - and to mock or criticise the mainstream media for inadequate coverage. Jeff Sharlet, an author and political journalist who writes for Harper's Magazine and Rolling Stone, engaged with some of these criticisms.
 

 

Just a Comedian?

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart will be in the next issue of Rolling Stone, doing what he does best -- making insightful and yet oddly frustrating jokes about President Obama and 24-hour cable news:

"[The 24-hour networks] are now the absolute most powerful force driving the political narrative," he says. "And the picture that they create is one of conflict, because they're on for 24 hours a day, so they have to create a compelling reason for you to watch them. Otherwise, they're just Muzak – newzak."

He held his Rally To Restore Sanity last fall as an attempt to counteract their message: "The idea of the rally was to say, 'They created this false sense of urgency. It's a funhouse mirror.' That's probably the frustration that people had with the rally: It didn't have aspirations beyond our normal aspiration, which is to point out comedically something we think is fucked." 
 

Journo Book Club

I like reading books written by journalists, mainly because I find stories more interesting when I know a bit about the person telling them. The last few I've read make for a nice cross-section.

I enjoyed The Influencing Machine by NPR's Brooke Gladstone, a comic book (of all things) about the history of the media and how we consume and shape it:

The media machine is a delusion. What we're really dealing with is a mirror: an exalting, degrading, tedious, and transcendent funhouse mirror of America. Actually, media is a plural noun: we're dealing with a whole mess of mirrors. They aren't well calibrated; they're fogged, and cracked. But you're in there, reflected somewhere, and so is everyone else (including people you dislike).