MEDIA: Free Press Applauds House Media Ownership Act

Free Press applauds the introduction of the “Media Ownership Act of 2007″ by Reps. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Dave Reichert (R-Wash.), a bill that would overturn disastrous new FCC media rules.

MOVEON HAS A PETITION ABOUT THE FCC FOR YOU TO SIGN

Comcast Says FCC Limit Rule Is ‘Perverse’

The new FCC regulation will limit Comcast to 30% of the pay-TV market in the United States, halting the billion-dollar acquisitions that have made it the largest cable company in the nation. Comcast describes the new limit as “perverse” and may end up in court over it.

TWO STUDIES ON WAR COVERAGE

Project for Excellence in Journalism: The Portrait from Iraq: How the Press Has Covered Events on the Ground

Wednesday, Dec. 19—Americans received a grim picture of the war in Iraq in the first 10 months of 2007. Daily violence accounted for 47% of the stories studied. And of the stories that offered an assessment of the direction of the war, most were pessimistic, according to a new study of press coverage from Iraq from January to October.

In what Defense Department statistics show to be the deadliest year so far for U.S. forces in Iraq, journalists responded to the challenge of covering the ongoing violence in Iraq by limiting their interpretation of these violent events and keeping their reports short.

However, as time passed, narrative accounts of events on the ground seemed to brighten. Late summer and fall saw a decline of reports about daily attacks, as well as a decrease in the amount of coverage from the war-torn country overall. That shift in coverage also coincided with a general sense by the American public that the military efforts in Iraq were going “very” or “fairly” well.

This study suggests that a bigger issue is not how the media interprets events, but what kinds of events actually get covered. This question is especially important when examined in relation to extreme dangers and restrictions facing the war correspondents in Iraq. These reporters believe that they adequately covered the military’s actions, but that they could have improved coverage on the lives of Iraqis. The results of the content analysis add validity to their assessments.

These are some of the findings of a study of more than 1,100 stories from January through October from 40 different news outlets conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research institute that examines the press.

FAIR: MEDIA SIGNALING PUBLIC NOT TO CARE ABOUT WAR

To hear many in the mainstream media tell it, the Iraq War is of diminishing importance to American voters. But the evidence for such a shift in the electorate is thin at best–suggesting that journalists and pundits are really the ones who would rather not talk about Iraq as we head into an election year.

The New York Times offered a glimpse of this argument in a November 25 piece headlined “As Democrats See Security Gains in Iraq, Tone Shifts.” The article suggested that “leading Democratic presidential candidates” were having trouble acknowledging “success” in Iraq while still opposing the war: “But the changing situation suggests for the first time that the politics of the war could shift in the general election next year, particularly if the gains continue.”

This was carried further a few days later by the Washington Post (11/28/07), where it was reported that the “debate at home over the Iraq war has shifted significantly,” a phenomenon that “has strategists in both parties reevaluating their assumptions about how the final year of the Bush presidency and the election to succeed him will play out.” The Post suggested that the “evolving public attitudes reflect, or perhaps explain, a turn in Washington as well.” The suggestion that Washington might be reacting to subtle changes in public opinion is a curious one; if public sentiment were truly guiding policy, then U.S. troops would have been home long ago.

The idea that the public was ceasing to care so much about Iraq was heard again in the Post on December 3, when pundit Peter Beinart advanced the argument in a column under the headline “Non-Story Remakes the Race.” Beinart’s lead example was that a recent Democratic candidates’ debate featured little talk about the Iraq War. As Beinart put it, “In the biggest surprise of the campaign so far, the election that almost everyone thought would be about Iraq is turning out not to be. And that explains a lot about which candidates are on the rise and which ones are starting to fall.”

WEB JOURNO KILLED IN IRAQ: ALIVE IN BAGHDAD CORRESPONDENT KILLED IN SADR CITY

RELEASE: 22-Year Old Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi Killed on December 14 Allegedly by the Iraqi National Guard.Alive in Baghdad Collecting Donations for Surviving Family Members (Mother and Sister)

Alive in Baghdad, a web news program reported and filmed by local Iraqis and distributed by independent US news agency Small World News lost correspondent Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi after he was killed over the weekend in Sadr City. The correspondent was found dead by a family member after being shot 31 times. Details as to motive and circumstances about the killing are undetermined.

Donations can also be made, via PayPal, to smallworldnews@gma

NEW YORK OBSERVER: CNN’s GREAT YEAR:

In recent days, Jonathan Klein signed a four-year contract extension to remain as president of CNN/U.S. Accordingly, Mr. Klein was in a good mood as he addressed staffers during a quarterly Q&A session at the Time Warner Center on the afternoon of Dec. 17.

CNN Worldwide, he told the troops, was enjoying its fourth straight year of double-digit profit growth. “It hasn’t been the greatest news year,” Mr. Klein said. “There haven’t been major news events that have moved the needle. But overall, we’re up pretty significantly, which is nice.”

EVEN CSPAN TILTS RIGHT

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A new study has found that C-SPAN overwhelmingly favors conservative think tanks in its coverage by a three-to-one margin over all left-of-center think tanks. The paper, “Tilting Rightward: C-SPAN’s Coverage of Think Tanks,” by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), found that conservatives received 44 percent of total think tank coverage, while conservative/libertarian received another 7 percent, for a right-wing majority of 51 percent. Everything left of center received only 18 percent, with center-left and progressive think tanks garnering 13 percent and 5 percent, respectively. Centrist think tanks got the rest of the coverage.

“C-SPAN is failing to live up to its mission of providing ‘a balanced presentation of points of view,’” said Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of CEPR and co-author of the study. “In a significant amount of its coverage - events and analysis by influential organizations shaping policy - C-SPAN is presenting opinions that, most of the time, are far to the right of most Americans. It is also lopsided by any common definition of the political spectrum, with a very large bias toward the right.”

MEDIA LAYOFFS

I reported the other day that media companis are themselves havng trouble raising money. NBCUni–owned By GE which reportedly has been involved in subprime loans through one of its affiliates –is laying employees off at MSNBC. The hot rumor is that NBC Nightly News may be hit too.