Feral Beast: MSM Coverage of Obama's Historic Win

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

MSM Coverage of Obama's Historic Win

Some Georgia crackers are still in denial, if this local paper is anything to go by. Get this, the historic victory for Obama, the 44th president and first man of color to win the White House doesn't make it above the fold. But dog bites child in playground makes it. The Brits got a bit more excited, as evidenced by this excitable tabloid spread, below:

Skimming through the usual jumble of headlines on the Drudge Report (Drudgery), the Feral Beast spotted this pair: Republicans Ponder Path to Renewal... Jogger runs mile with rabid fox locked on her arm... and considered briefly whether the featured jogger was a certain keep -fit Sarah Palin, until I realized that she must be back in Alaska, to the first igloo or wherever. Newsweek's snarkiest election line was describing the "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," charging new clothes for Dad and the kids to republican donors. Meanwhile, the Caribou Barbie was sometimes clad in only a couple of towels!

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Feral Beast? Try Lemming

If the press were an animal, what kind of animal would it be? I’ve got my answer. A legion of lemmings, furry and well-intentioned, but ultimately condemned by their nature to follow each other mindlessly off a tall cliff, over the Paris Hilton peak or into the Invade Iraq crevasse. The words “feral beast” certainly wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not particularly accurate or particularly evocative. But that is how the departing British prime minister, Tony Blair, sees journalists: as malicious tormentors who have tried to tear him limb from limb.

--Gal Beckerman of the Columbia Journalism Review

“Journalism is a form of cartography,” write Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach of Pew. “It creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map.”

"Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems." Adapted from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

Retrospective : five decades of journalism as reported by CJR

Fake AP Stylebook reminds us: Unless you're doing a story on the Muppets, you are not a gonzo journalist.

"The once idealized information superhighway has become a parking lot of error, misinformation, rumor and junk." Poynter Institute, advocating a broader definition of who is a journalist.