Media

A Parenthetical Point About The Wall Street Journal

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Shannon cites a Wall Street Journal article in one his recent posts.

I’m not sure if everyone is aware of this but the WSJ functions as two separate newspapers, an editorial page and everything else. The editorial page has its own staff, publishes libertarian/conservative opinion pieces of generally high quality, and stands out amid the leftist mediocrity of so many American editorial pages. The news pages are written by people who are not much different from New York Times reporters. So it’s not surprising, and not significant, that a hit piece about Palin would appear in the Journal’s news section. That’s just how the Journal operates. (I’ve always been curious about the social dynamics between the editorial and news staffs, but that’s another issue.)

Dual Standards

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From National Review Online:

   But recall that the public cannot get access to paperwork related to grants to distributed by then-state-legislator Barack Obama (records from 1997 to 2000 aren’t available); his state legislative office records (which he says may have been thrown out); he refuses to release a specific list of law clients, instead giving a list of all of his firm’s clients, numbering several hundred each year; he won’t release his application to the state bar (where critics wonder if he lied in responding to questions about parking tickets and past drug use); he’s never released any legal or billing records to verify that he only did a few hours of work for a nonprofit tied to convicted donor Rezko; and he’s never released any medical records, just a one-page letter from his doctor. Then there was the effort against Stanley Kurtz for his effort to examine documents relating to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, where William Ayers hired Obama to be board chairman. Oh, and Biden has released his earmark requests for one year out of his 36 in the Senate.

The double standard in the coverage of Republicans and Democrats on the part of mainstream media just boggles the mind.  

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Another Point About The Atlantic and its Photo of McCain

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Most discussion so far has centered on the photographer. The Atlantic‘s editor says she blindsided him by tacitly going out of her way to make McCain look bad.

But The Atlantic nevertheless used one of Greenberg’s photos on its cover. It may be the least bad of the photos but it’s still, I think, an unflattering portrait. It is harshly lit and makes McCain look older and uglier than he is. The editor calls it respectful, but I don’t think that’s plausible unless you ignore the flattering portraits of Obama that are everywhere. Why not make McCain look better? They could have bought a better photo from Getty. They weren’t obliged to use Greenberg’s work. (If you are going to make a respectful portrait of an older man or a middle-aged woman, you don’t use harsh, direct light that casts shadows and accentuates skin flaws. Look at the diffuse light in the photo of Greenberg on this page. That’s the kind of light she should have used on McCain. The Atlantic‘s staff know this stuff.)

It looks to me like the magazine wanted to denigrate McCain in a way that was subtle enough to be deniable.

UPDATE: Neptunus Lex posts The Atlantic‘s Obama and McCain covers side by side.

It’s Called Replacement Pricing, D*mmit!

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This really chaps my hide.

I’m watching news stories about hurricane Ike and the subsequent rise in gas prices in parts of the country far distant from the storms. Reporters and politicians mumbled confusedly about how prices could be going up already.

I’ll say it one more time for those who can’t be bothered to actually ask someone who owns a gas station. Gas stations set prices for the gas they sell today based on the wholesale price of the gas they will have to buy to replace it. Get it? The price you pay for a gallon today is the cost of the gallon the station will have buy to replace the one you just bought.  

Gas stations sell gas at or near cost, so if they did not use replacement pricing any sudden spike in gas prices would shut them down and you couldn’t get any gas. I simply do not know why our public and private talking heads cannot understand and communicate this simple fact.  

[update (9.13.2008.9:55am): More on gas pricing via Instapundit]

Quote of the Day

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From commenter “OldSalt” in this discussion at Belmont Club:

One of the major irritants I have about 9/11 is the defacto blackout on all newsreel coverage that day by the MSM. It’s a crime. American’s need to see the result of the failure of deterrence, of the failure of their government to adequately protect them by developing an adequate military, and by projecting power forward to any location that doubts American resolve (e.g. Georgia, for one example, Venezuela for a second example). All the “military power” in the world is useless and wasted if those holding the reigns have insufficient resolve or courage to deploy it, and deploy it sufficiently to “sell it” to the world.
 
Americans need to see the results of true American failure. They need to see American’s just normal and “ordinary” as themselves making the extra-ordinary decision forced upon them, i.e. to jump to their deaths from 100+ stories to avoid the suffering of burning to death. That was the choice that our politicians left them, when they failed to do their job. (I hold the Clinton Administration and their hold-overs, and the then-Democrat Senate for failing to approve nominations 9 months after the election, primarily responsible. However, there is certainly enough blame to go around, and to cover 20 years of “pretending” by both parties.)
 
I wish to GOD to see one of the networks grow gonads and put the entire 9/11 day of media coverage on the air. My God, the men going to war today weren’t even teenagers in some cases, and they deserve to know the full context of why the are going to war! However, the liberal MSM knows that the factual media coverage immediately begs the question of “why did it happen?”, “who could or should have prevented it?”, and truthful answers to those questions would be certain to impact the “future political viability” of some of the MSM “journalists” favorite politicians. And so, the blackout continues, even on the so-called “right wing” Fox. Not even profit moves their decisions; it’s an absolute blackout.