I love this graphic. It comes from the NY Times. The one above makes no sense… so..
Here’s the link —> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/12/us/politics/obamas-state-of-the-union-themes.html?smid=tw-thecaucus
I also love this live fact-check of President Obama’s State Of The Union and the responses…
Good stuff…
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/02/12/1582431/sotu-blog/?mobile=nc#lbu-1360726926
Look at the two headlines in today’s New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. One says that “Tepid Job Growth Fuels Worry” while other says, “Job Creation Is Still Steady Despite Worry”.
So, what is it…fueling worry because the jobs growth is tepid or is job creation steady despite of some sort of worry? By the way, the first headline FUELS worry, second headline is a little more positive while there is some worry, although apparently not fueled. All this stirred up (do I dare say, fueled?) a memory of how I nearly had my head taken off by a college professor. It was my Journalism Ethics professor and he was pissed. You see, we were talking about the press….a journalist…being objective. I contended that a journalist could not purely objective. Never going to happen. No way. Man, we went round and round.
My point is this: In being objective, what do you use in an attempt to be objective? Everything you’ve been subjected to in your life up to that point.
For example: My wife and I were taking a nice, after-dinner stroll in mid-town Manhattan back in September of 2012. It was about 10:30p. There was a long line of guys selling knock-off purses, (Gucci, Prada and Louis Vuitton–oh my!) etc along the sidewalk. They had tarps on the ground, roughly 6′ x 6′, with the bags piled on top.
Suddenly, three police vans and two unmarked police cars pulled up and screeched to a halt. Out jumped about 10-policemen, running at full-speed to catch/tackle/horse-collar the guys selling the illegal goods. Somehow, a few of the guys noticed the cars before they arrived and started to fold in all four corners of their tarps and take off like a bat outta hell.
My wife was startled and stunned. I took out my iPhone and started shooting video. There were people running everywhere. Police tackling guys. Some guys getting away by abandoning their goods. Others freaking out and running into the side of a cement barrier protecting a fountain, falling down with the cops pouncing on them.
I saw it as a pretty-cool, well-planned raid that turned out to be fairly effective.
My wife saw it as a violent, wild west kinda free-for-all. It shook her up, not in a scared kinda way, but her adrenaline and nerves. She had never seen anything like that in person. I was still shooting video with a very steady hand.
If both of us were to file a quick newspaper story about the event, each story would be vastly different, yet of the same event. Why? Because I’ve seen raids, fights, busts before. I have been subjected to them before. My wife had not. Whatever a person’s ‘social’ DNA has picked up since birth informs your ability to be objective –from the subjective experiences in that person’s life.
Reading my wife’s account, a reader would assume it was a violent wild-west, free-for-all in mid-town while my report would be of a fairly routine, effective bust of counterfeiters. Sure some heads were busted, but it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary —unless you’re my wife.
Bottom line- the subjective informs the objective, therefore one can never be completely objective. Ever.
This is how it is offered in journalism school: “It is often said that editorials are subjective –opinion based on events, facts, etc…and that reporting is objective –reporting the facts from many sources and is intended to be unbiased.”
Just take a second look at the headlines in the picture at the top of the page.
CNN is by far the best when a calamity strikes. It’s in their DNA. They are excellent across the board. They not only bring you what is happening in a far-reaching, but pin-point immediacy, but they are a step or two ahead of the competition in advancing the story and ‘seeing-around-corners’ during a crisis. A ton of that has to do with veteran producers and fantastic, experienced talent in the field. To put it simply, they’ve been there, done that in an excellent way for years.
On the flip side, FNC is like local news when a huge event happens. Actually, there are some local news operations out there which are better. It’s just not what FOX News does or does best. I do have to give props to Shepard Smith. He can handle just about anything live –including a hurricane/nor’easter — and advance the story as it unfolds to where it is headed. But he’s really the only one who is solid in that type of calamity. And don’t even mentioned FNC’s Election Night coverage. Debacle is being kind. I’ve been in the business for more than 20-years and covered a number of major breaking news events –the crash of TWA 800 over Long Island, for instance –before I went to the darkside of journalism, aka entertainment news. So, I sat with a keen eye watching FNC during Superstorm Sandy and knew exactly where they were failing and where their coverage should have be going. FOX has a long way to go in that area. And, quite frankly, I don’t know if they will ever match CNN. CNN is a powerhouse.
However, CNN may never match FNC in being a powerhouse every other day of the year when ‘normal’ news rules the day. Why? Because FNC is brilliant knowing exactly who they are. Look, I’m not a fan of FNC as a whole, but I am a HUGE fan of FNC ‘the branding machine.’ FNC makes no apologies. Day in and day out they make no bones about their right-leaning agenda. And they do it very, very well. There was a report back in 2006 by The Project on Excellence in Journalism. It showed that 68% of FNC stories contained personal opinions. That same report found that 27% of MSNBC’s stories contained personal opinions while CNN came in at 4%. In reading the report further, it states via a ‘content analysis’ that “Fox was measurably more one-sided than the other networks.” It also found that Fox journalists were more opinionated on the air. Of course, that’s their brand. THAT is their POINT-OF-DIFFERENCE.
After years of swimming in a pool of what-the-hell-are-we alongside CNN, MSNBC and the suits figured out their brand and, subsequently and not coincidentally, increased their ratings. CNN hasn’t figured out it’s brand. They seriously need a branding expert OUTSIDE of the CNN sandbox to come in with a fresh perspective. By the way, CNN has an amazing team of producers and talent who are incredible at huge breaking news stories. The network now needs the new hybrid producers and hybrid talent for the other 364 normal news days of the year. From the talent side, which I obviously know, CNN needs five-tool players. Those who don’t just ‘front’ a show, but can create other content for the network while branding it –all within the social zeitgeist of the day with a wink and a nod to the importance of the emerging second screen experience. It is an amazing and thrilling time to be talent, to be in this business.
It would be thrilling to see CNN come back and give MSNBC and FNC a run for their money, instead of getting smoked in the ratings on a daily basis.
Although Washington and Colorado will probably vote for CNN getting smoked.
Here is all you need to know about Karl “I’m Melting” Rove.
He floated the John McCain “rumor” that McCain fathered a daughter with an African American prostitute. He orchestrated another campaign, accusing Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a Vietnam veteran AND amputee, of being soft on terrorism.
The ads were reprehensible. Karl Rove would do just about anything to get his candidate elected.
My wife often talks about karma. She’s Indian. It’s bound to come up. Karl Rove’s karma has come due. Massive failure in the 2008 campaign. And now Rove’s colossal failure of his $1 billion-dollar effort to elect Mitt Romney et al, culminating in “The Karl Rove Meltdown Seen Live! ‘Round The World”.
If you had wasted $1-billion dollars, not to mention $127-million dollars on more than 82,000 Mitt Romney television spots (according to ad-tracker company Kantar Media’s CMAG) and you were watching it all implode while you’re live on television, you’d have a meltdown, too.
Remember, Rove created the model for so-called outside money groups to raise and spend money –more than $1-billion on these elections. By the way, his two political outfits, Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (really? THAT’S the name you picked? Grassroots?) and American Crossroads, saw almost no return for their money.
Rove’s old-school, bare-knuckle, despicable way of campaigning is now irrelevant. His irrelevance (and most of the old, white-guy pundits on tv) firmly cemented in these last two presidential campaigns by a new-age and new technology that has clearly passed by Karl Rove.
Data mining and social media have replaced fear and loathing on the political landscape. I actually think Hunter S. Thompson would drink to that or at least pop an amyl. Fear and loathing and Karl Rove, clearly not mutually exclusive, replaced in one fell-swoop on national television while millions watched Karl’s political self-immolation.
KARMA. Sometimes it burns.
Here are some of the best photos from today’s election, so far. Most of them are from the East Coast…cuz they opened first.
Hopefully, we’ll get some cool pics from those of us here on the West Coast.
These are from a CNN link.
More later.
So now you have no excuse when you say, “When is my polling place open?”.
No matter your state, here is every single state’s time of opening and closing.
So, get your ass out there and vote!!
On the eve of our great nation’s Presidential Election (and more)as the candidates along with Bruce Springsteen, Jay-Z and others finish up their final day of campaigning, I thought it would be appropriate to pass along the TOP 10 GREATEST MOMENTS OF THE 2012 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, AKA, PFV –Politicians’ Funniest Videos.
Please click on the link below to see all ten…
The 10 Greatest Moments Of The 2012 Campaign | ThinkProgress.
Not sure if you have heard of Nate Silver. For starters, he correctly predicted the winner in 49 of the 50 states back in the 2008 Presidential Election. Oh by the way, he also correctly predicted the winner of ALL 35 SENATE RACES IN 2008.
Silver is an uber statistician, to say the least.
So, read the damn article I’ve linked for you…and glean some knowledge as we head into Tuesday’s Doozy of a Day.
The ENTIRE page is FILLED with all kinds of stats, predictions, trends as it relates to TDD.
What I like is that Nate gets flak from both camps, Repubs n’ Dems. Romney n’ Obama.
Also, take a look-see at all the info down the right side of the page. As of now, President Obama wins 307.2 Electoral votes, Romney 230.8.
State and National Polls Come Into Better Alignment – NYTimes.com.
I think this is brilliant. Two guys named Ryan Nelsen and Fields Harrington (Fields is the one in the white shirt) hopped on a tandem bicycle after they rigged it to a generator and pedaled like mad to fire up some power for those without power. This is on Avenue C in the East Village this past Thursday, November 1. This neighborhood is without any electrical power. Clearly, it was a welcomed idea judging by all the cell phones attached to the makeshift grid.
Here is the link to an excellent post of Hurricane Sandy photographs from around the Tri-State area.
Jon Stewart utters the line of the election. “I guess he found the f&*%ing light switch” in a great bit about Gov. Chris Christie being honest and straightforward regarding Obama and the devastation in New Jersey.
The aforementioned line comes around 4:11 into the vid. The bit on Christie and the idiot at FOX NEWS starts around 3:10.
Anyway, good first show back after the Sandy hit. Just the right tone and tenor. And full of laughs.
Enjoy.
