What a Week
All of us, including Barack Obama, should hope that the Obama campaign did not snub Ryan Lizza, not only because of what it would tell us about Obama, but because of what Lizza is capable of telling us.
When Katie Couric told Haaretz that "The glory days of TV news are over," her words framed what looked like a lament, but her recent interview with Obama make them seem like a threat.
All of us, including Barack Obama, should hope that the Obama campaign did not snub Ryan Lizza, not only because of what it would tell us about Obama, but because of what Lizza is capable of telling us.
he revelation that as an AP reporter Fournier privately urged Karl Rove to "keep up the fight," came as no surprise to anyone who has read his recent campaign work.
Morris and McGann slam the Obama health plan for its alleged generous coverage of undocumented immigrants. How can the Post print an op-ed whose core factual premise is transparently false?
Tom Friedman distorted Al Gore's new energy challenge, which called for an energy policy based on 100 percent renewable sources, by including the role of coal. Isn't coal a nonrenewable fossil fuel?
Maybe we should eschew self-quantifying like Chekhov would most surely ask us to, like Tolstoy would want, like most self-effacing novelists and short story writers would expect. But it's hard to know what their self-assessment was like before all this self-Googling.
Who can blame viewers for wanting a little cavorting with their reporting? Today's voters toggle easily between sober op-eds and faux-news analysts squirting seltzer down the candidates' pants.
Who declared open season on people with autism? Autism ain't for wimps. Whether you're a pre-verbal toddler or a high functioning forty year-old, it has challenges most folks cannot fathom.
China is curtailing the hours when press can film in Tiananmen Square, and they'll try to censor the television narrative. But they won't be able to prohibit 24/7 coverage via the Internet of protests as they happen.
Newspaper and magazine content will continue to be valuable and read; it will just have a different, far less expensive and more rational distribution channel -- the Internet.
Whatever one thinks of the New Yorker cover, a robust press can't operate under threat of reprisal for unwelcome items.
So how does Warholism work, exactly? Youth know they can have their 15 minutes of fame with the click of a mouse. All it takes is a little creativity, a video camera, and an Internet connection.
All of the professional explanations for the decline of broadcast television ratings seem to agree that the problem comes from outside forces and an unavoidable changing landscape. I disagree.