Current News and Media Videos

Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the largest media conglomerate in the world, is expanding his media empire to India. Is anyone surprised?

I believe this will be the new wave for U.S. and British media companies. Having already saturated the U.S. market with advertising and media garbage, it’s time to work on the rest of the world, to export American shallowness abroad. The Internet will undoubtedly play a part in that since News Corp also owns MySpace.

Murdoch’s plan is to build six regional TV stations in India. After fully saturating India with shallow TV media targeted toward the Indian culture, I’m sure Murdoch will continue to expand into other parts of the world. And so will other media empires. Ted Turner and Time-Warner can’t be far behind.

In there area where I live there are a lot of small town newspapers. I am close enough to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to be fortunate enough to see a lot of good historic stuff. Reenactments, tours, visitors, museums, and even the annual Gettysburg Bike Week. I also write the local Gettysburg Blog.

During the course of writing my blog I subscribe to Google Alerts that use the word Gettysburg in any form. Whether it be Gettysburg alone, Gettysburg, Pa. or Gettysburg Pennsyania, I want to see it. I also subscribe to Google Alerts for both York County and Adams County. Interestingly, the paper that I see the most stories in for anything related to Gettysburg or Adams County is the Hanover Evening Sun. Bear in mind, of course, that Hanover is located in York County.

I have often found a story related to Gettysburg that I found in the Hanover Evening Sun that I didn’t find in the Gettysburg Times, the paper that covers Gettysburg. I find this to be rather fascinating. Stories that I’d expect to see in the Times don’t end up there and stories that shouldn’t appear in the Evening Sun do. That brings up a very interesting question, How do local newspaper editors choose what is important enough for their local newspapers?

Ad revenues are down for big media companies. Who’d have guessed? Gas prices are up so where are people going to cut expenses? On the expenses that aren’t 100% necessary and for many small businesses, advertising is one of those things that eats into the budget, especially if small business owners can’t easily spot or measure the ROI of the expense. But big companies have budgets too. And when hard times hit they’ll cut their expenses just like the small fries will. So this is where we’re at right now. Big oil had its hey-day and now the rest of us are eating dirt. Thanks Exxon Mobil. The news industry loves you.

The second story this week has more to do with legislation. The Senate has decided not to vote on the media shield law. It’s technical name is the Free Flow of Information Act. All but five Republicans want to vote on energy legislation before tackling the free flow of information law that keeps the public informed of important goings on in Washington. Well, they may not have their priorities right, but at least they have priorities, much like the Big Oil companies. The media thanks you.

When I logged into WordPress a few minutes ago I noticed that I had 81 comments awaiting moderation. All of them were spam.

Now, I logged in yesterday to a post and that was the last time I logged in. So it’s been a whole day. 24 hours, give or take. That is the highest number of spam comments that I’ve received in a single day, and I delete all spam comments every day. Almost all of the comments were by insurance companies and gambling websites. Those are the biggest perpetrators. The biggest surprise of the day? No spam from Viagra companies or their most famous representative, Bob Dole.

Some of the spammers try to operate under real names, which are aliases. You know, like Aron, Hero, and Halo. Very common names. Their last names are probably Smith.

Spam is annoying. We all know that. But it’s even more annoying when you have to spend five minutes of your time deleting the messages you know you’ll never approve. I’ve got spam protection, but Akismet doesn’t catch everything. If I didn’t have my moderator settings set to only show comments approved by me then all of my visitors would see my spam. In other words, my underwear would be showing. Good thing I wore a belt.

P.S. Since I’ve written this post I’ve received one new comment. Want to bet it’s spam?

P.P.S. I win. From Aron again.

Aron
http://nicyheteti.ibnsites.com/emmitt-till/ | neo@hotmail.com | 92.48.127.97

Thanks, Aron.

According to Media Matters, yes:

It seems to me that “the Maverick” isn’t so maverick any more. He hardly ever says what he really thinks. He just delivers the GOPs talking points and he sounds more like George W. Bush now than G.W. does, except for perhaps the stupid verbal gaffes. I know beneath all of that tough exterior is a melon of a man just dying to say what’s really on his mind. He could explode any day now and it’s my hope that he’ll eventually tell the Republican Party to just go ‘F’ itself. Then I might vote for him. Media love or not.

First, Tim Russert died. Now, his replacement has been announced: Mark Whitaker. But that isn’t the only change in news personalities that is its worth being news. On another front, political commentator Robert Novak is suspending his news program due to a brain tumor. Last week he struck a pedestrian while driving and claimed later that he didn’t know he had hit someone. Ouch!

What do these changes in news and media personalities - long time icons in the news business - represent? Is this symbolic of a major change in direction for the news in America?

Novak was a popular addition to Pat Buchanan’s “Crossfire” before going off on his own. I’m not sure what this means in terms of where the news business is headed, but I’m sure it marks a real change. The only question is, Will that change be good?

Why hasn’t this been reported in the mainstream press? It could be that there is so much news going on right now that newspapers and magazines just don’t have the space for it. But I doubt it. Online, space considerations are nil. News websites should have it all over the place, but they don’t. Why not?

When the vice president of the United States is told by a disabled veterans group that he can’t speak at their meetings because his policies are draconian, that’s news. Particularly when that vice president is one of the chief architects of the war that caused many of the disabilities those veterans have. He wants them sequestered while he speaks? Why?

It’s just more of the reasons this administration has got to go. The sooner the better.

I’ve come to the conclusion that most people who comment on blogs don’t know how to argue. If you want an object lesson in non-sequiturs just visit a political blog. Even more so, visit a conservative political blog.

Over at Pajamas Media, Jennifer Rubin lambastes the mainstream media for “going ga ga over Obama’s trip to Europe.” I haven’t seen any ga ga, but I have read some news accounts, which are exactly that, news accounts. They report what a particular person is doing or saying. If that’s “ga ga” then I guess the whole world is ga ga over oxygen.

But never mind that. Rubin makes a few salient points even though her own thesis concerning Obama’s trip to Europe completely misses the point. Here she is in her own words:

Watching tens of thousands of Germans listen to his worldly appeal that “this is our [who is “our” exactly?] time,” voters back home may not be impressed. And poll numbers suggest they aren’t. The blatant appeal to international world opinion (why exactly was he giving a campaign speech to tens of thousands of non-voting Europeans?) may not be the recipe for success.

First, let’s get one thing straight. Obama wasn’t giving a campaign speech to Europeans. He was posing for the cameras. He may have been speaking to Europeans, but he was giving his campaign speech to the cameras, which he was aware would be sending his message to voters back home. It was a savvy thing to do, especially when you consider that one of the most ardent criticisms against him by his opponents is a lack of foreign policy experience. His trip was meant to prove that he can appear presidential, act presidential, and carry himself presidentially in the waters of foreign policy, which in essence means diplomatically. Whether he succeeded at that goal is another discussion.

But given that Republicans have missed that point entirely, it’s no wonder that they are stuck on “Obama is a closet Muslim” and “he’s a Harvard elitist who only cares about himself.” That’s what they want to believe. The facts don’t matter.

Die-hard Republicans who refuse to see that Obama has gained clout among independents are going to ruin the election for their own man. McCain cannot win if he doesn’t recognize that Obama has the kind of appeal that he needs. He cannot run on experience when he intends to succeed a president whose lack of experience has butchered everything that America traditionally - and John McCain as a committed American - stand for. The race will go to whomever can convince the majority of voters in the majority of states to “buy into” the idea that he is a marked and distinctive change from the current administration. So far, that’s Obama. Whether he will make a good president or not is immaterial. Whether he is the right man for the job is not relevant. Whether he is experienced or inexperienced, a Muslim or a Christian, or too wrapped up in himself is not the point. That he, right now, has the upper hand in marketing his brand is.

For a good laugh, read the comments on Rubin’s blog post. You’d think these people were preparing for losing grip with reality.

If you really want to know why Barack Obama will win the election in November, you’ll have to watch this video:

You’d think he was running for president of the world.

This is simply brilliant:

The surge is part of American history, and American history has a number of components. And this American history was initiated in some sense by Captain John Smith, and when I visited with him in 1607, he had already initiated that history at Jamestown, by going in and clearing and holding in certain places. That is American history. And he told me at that time that he believed that that history, which is, quote, the surge, part of the surge, would be successful. [Ed. note: Did you catch that crucial move?] So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to continue our history. And so I’m not sure, frankly, that people really understand that a surge is part of American history [Ed. note: there it is again!], which means the settlement at Jamestown, declaring independence, winning the Civil War, emancipating the slaves, the New Deal, deciding to invade Iraq, and then clearly a part of that, an important part of it, was additional troops to help ensure the safety of the sheikhs, to regain control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge continued to succeed, and that American history.

You’ll have to read the entire article. Andrew Sullivan is the only person I know that is taking the words of John McCain himself and deconstructing them to arrive at the true underlying irrational assumptions behind them. This is true political analysis, the kind you won’t find in the op-ed pages of America’s newspapers.