Month: April 2006

Does anyone know of a reasonably well-done one-hour (or less) documentary dedicated to the proposition that the media are hopelessly suffused with liberal bias? I’d like to show it to my History of Journalism students before the semester ends. Thank you in advance.

I wouldn’t bother to quote this stuff, except that Aaron Margolis has a really good-looking blog design and even manages to attract comments. So I guess he’s fair game. Anyway, I briefly alluded to his attack on Jill Carroll yesterday, and now feel compelled to follow up. To wit:

The real story that is being avoided is that Jill Carroll read a script at the terrorists’ gun point that could just as easily been written by Sen. Harry Reid, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Ted Kennedy, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, George Soros, Sen. Russ Feingold, or Michael Moore. You may also to that list: Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, Saddam Hussein, and all the cowardly masked terrorists you see in videos released by al Jazeera. The real story here is that the terrorists used Jill Carroll to spread their propaganda, the same propaganda that is commonly professed by the anti-war left wing of the United States, including prominent Democratic members of Congress.

Yes, that’s right. The “real story.” Absolutely amazing.

The New York Times today unveils a complete redesign of its Web site. It looks great. The best part is that it has a new feature called “Today’s Paper,” which gives you the digital equivalent of what you might otherwise have delivered to your doorstep in the morning.

Before, the Times site only gave you the front page. When you’d go to the other sections, it was hard to tell whether you were looking at something from that day’s paper, an article that wouldn’t appear until the next day or just a wire-service update that would never find its way into print. For someone old-fashioned enough to want to read that day’s paper, even if I didn’t get to it until evening, I like the new arrangement much better.

Two suggestions:

• It looks as though there are no story descriptions for “Today’s Paper” except for material appearing on the front page. Bring them back.
• Offer a week’s worth of “Today’s Paper.” That’s what the Wall Street Journal does for paying subscribers. It would be a great feature to offer TimesSelect customers who, say, missed the previous day’s edition and want to page through it quickly.

Overall, though, this looks like a big step forward for a newspaper Web site that was already among the best.

Update: I missed it at first, but there is indeed a feature called “The Times in Print from the Past 7 Days.” Thanks to Geoff for pointing it out.

This looks like the best news from Bruce Springsteen in years. I’m not a Pete Seeger fan, but I like bluegrass, and I’ve always loved Springsteen’s treatment of old-time material such as the classic Woody Guthrie songs he performed on “Folkways: A Vision Shared.”

So “We Shall Overcome” strikes me as a good bet to be his best album in ages — including the tolerable-but-overrated “Devils & Dust” and his hideous 9/11 album, “The Rising.” It’s about time.

A blogger named Aaron Margolis, who actually wrote that Jill Carroll “set herself up to be a new hero for the liberal left with her criticism of the Bush Administration” in one of her death-threat-coerced interviews, hasn’t apologized either. But, after all, he was just asking questions. Right?

Charles Johnson is “happy to report” that Jill Carroll isn’t actually ready to run off and join the Sunni insurgency. And he links approvingly to a blog that blames Carroll’s ordeal on the media (the “MSM,” natch) for its exploitation of freelancers.

Chuck: You viciously smeared a woman who’d been terrorized for 82 days because you thought she kinda sorta looked like she meant it when she criticized the U.S. mission in Iraq and said nice things about her captors.

I’m glad you’re happy. Now how about an apology?