Unpacking the Job Numbers, Roadblocks for Bernanke, and the Future of Mainstream Media

Tons of news in the market today as we unpack the surprisingly good job numbers, the Senate holds placed on Ben Bernanke’s renomination, and the massive Comcast-NBC deal and what it says about the new realities for mass media. Today’s the 99th edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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Related Links:

On Bernanke: Vitter, DeMint, Corker, Bunning
FTC on Media Bailout
New Realities for Mass Media
The FTC’s Shallow Dive into Journalism’s Future
The Real Reason Comcast is Buying NBC
Mainstream Media’s Broken Business Model

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Tags: Ben Bernanke, Comcast, Federal Reserve, FTC, GE
Posted Dec 4th 2009 at 8:58 am in Coffee and Markets, Economics, Media Criticism | 4116217 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/newledger/2009/12/04/unpacking-the-job-numbers-roadblocks-for-bernanke-and-the-future-of-mainstream-media/Unpacking+the+Job+Numbers%2C+Roadblocks+for+Bernanke%2C+and+the+Future+of+Mainstream+Media2009-12-04+15%3A58%3A11The+New+Ledger

Objective Journalism: Michael Gerson Defends a Profession That No Longer Exists

Yesterday, Washington Post columnist and former Bush II speechwriter Michael Gerson played a long slow violin solo over the death of the mainstream media. There’s nothing new in his piece. Dazed with panic as the circle of financial ruin closes in, we’ve heard this song many times before from our ink-stained dinosaurs. And true to form, Gerson can’t break the mold. It’s all there, the rose-colored glasses, denial, and a heaping helping of rationalization.

Once again, from that familiar MSM perch where one can look down their nose at the great unwashed who just don’t understand the magnificent tradition of journalism they’re about to lose, Gerson blames We the People for no longer wanting  to pay for our news and choosing partisan sources “that reinforce and exaggerate … political predispositions.”

How absurd. (more…)

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Tags: ABC, ACORN, Big Media, CBS, Clarence Thomas
Posted Nov 28th 2009 at 11:29 am in Featured Story, Media Criticism | 38002148 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/jjmnolte/2009/11/28/objective-journalism-michael-gerson-defends-a-profession-that-no-longer-exists/Objective+Journalism%3A+Michael+Gerson+Defends+a+Profession+That+No+Longer+Exists2009-11-28+18%3A29%3A33John+Nolte

California ACORN Responds to Revelation of Massive Doc Dump, Data Breach at Its San Diego Office

From NBClosangeles.com:

When reached for comment, Amy Schur of ACORN’s state office, explained why the paperwork was in the trash.

“In early October, when our San Diego staff were doing an office clean-up in preparation for a major 10-station phone bank program being set up in our offices, it appears that included in the piles of garbage being thrown out may have been some documents containing private information,” Schur wrote in an e-mail to NBCSanDiego. “To the individuals whose paperwork was pulled out of the dumpster by this guy Derrick Roach – unsuccessful Republican candidate for State Rep in San Diego – we truly apologize. We will seek return of this information so that we may give proper notice of the compromising of the information as required by law.”

When asked about ACORN’s policy for disposing of sensitive documents, Schur said, “It is ACORN’s policy to shred documents with personal information at the point when they no longer need to be retained.” (more…)

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Tags: ACORN, ACORN doc dump, ACORN San Diego, Amy Schur, CA Attorney General
Posted Nov 23rd 2009 at 4:50 pm in ACORN | 35846113 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2009/11/23/california-acorn-spokesman-responds-to-revelation-of-massive-doc-dump-and-data-breach/California+ACORN+Responds+to+Revelation+of+Massive+Doc+Dump%2C+Data+Breach+at+Its+San+Diego+Office2009-11-23+23%3A50%3A42Publius

How the MSM Might Survive: Come Out of the Ideological Closet

Whenever reading Politico, everything should be washed through this filter. You must always keep in the front of your mind that this supposed “news” organization took the time to dig up and publicize dirt on a private citizen whose only sin was asking a perfectly reasonable question of a public figure. Politico’s warning to the everyday American was clear: get in the way of our guy and we will summon all our resources to publicly humiliate you. This all goes to prove that Politico is nothing more than a digital version of the Dinosaur Media — and just as clueless and dishonest as their unholy brethren, especially when it comes to explaining why their counterparts are drowning in the tar pits of obsolescence.

To hear Politico tell it, CNN’s stuck in humiliating fourth place behind FOX, MSNBC and their own Headline News because they’ve made the mistake of not appealing to the great unwashed who prefer partisan bickering and echo chambers:

With the proliferation of media across platforms these days, there’s less shared knowledge among people, who are increasingly heading to niche outlets for information. At the same time, there’s a large appetite for the new media world where the MSM gatekeepers no longer hold as much clout, and “he said, she said” journalism gives way to strong point of view. …

There’s no doubt that the over-the-top, and politically partisan, hosts are having more success attracting viewers on nights when there’s no major news event. (more…)

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Tags: ABC, Breitbart's Bigs, CBS, CNN, Daily Kos
Posted Nov 2nd 2009 at 12:03 pm in Media Criticism, Politics | 24210107 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/jjmnolte/2009/11/02/how-the-msm-might-survive-come-out-of-the-ideological-closet/How+the+MSM+Might+Survive%3A+Come+Out+of+the+Ideological+Closet2009-11-02+19%3A03%3A18John+Nolte

Axelrod and Emanuel Help Shape ACORN Coverage?

1.  Fox News is not really a legitimate news source because it has a ‘point of view’ and

2.  We encourage all legitimate news networks to stop treating them as if they are legitimate.

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Tags: ABC, Andrew Breitbart, AP, Barack Obama, CBS
Posted Oct 22nd 2009 at 11:00 am in ACORN, Media Criticism, Politics | 1945889 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/sright/2009/10/22/axelrod-and-emanuel-help-shape-acorn-coverage/Axelrod+and+Emanuel+Help+Shape+ACORN+Coverage%3F2009-10-22+18%3A00%3A48Larry++O%26%2339%3BConnor

**UPDATE** Group Stands Ground Over Claims That NBC Employee Issued Anti-Semitic Email

Statement by Carter L. Clews to Steve Capus via the Americans For Limited Government website:

The increasingly hysterical responses by NBC news boss Steve Capus to the escalating Stonegate Scandal are disappointing at best and chilling at worst. Here is a man who runs what used to be a highly respected major news bureau who now finds himself conjuring up gremlins in cyberspace to defend what appears to be horrendously bigoted behavior within his own news room.

Having spoken directly with Mr. Capus for nearly 15 minutes Friday afternoon, I want to once again repeat my offer to him: if you really don’t believe that Ms Stone sent the “Bite me, Jew boy” email to ALG staffer Alex Rosenwald, we will be happy to work with you to track down who sent it from her Blackberry using her email address.

This is precisely the same offer I made to Ms Stone at 11:00AM Friday morning, when she denied having sent any such email to Alex Rosenwald. Now, Mr. Capus has changed her story to say that, yes, she sent an email on Thursday, but it did not say “Bite me, Jew boy.”

Again, we are more than willing to help NBC resolve its internal problems, but Mr. Capus needs to work with those trying to ferret out the full story, not against, us. Tom Brokaw, one of Mr. Capus’s closest friends has said of the NBC news boss, “He does have a little bit of a hair trigger. He could blow. But I could always walk in and close the door and say, ‘Take a breath.’ ” (more…)

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Tags: Alex Rosenwald, ALG, Bite me, Carter L. Clews, Jane Stone
Posted Sep 26th 2009 at 10:17 am in ACORN, Featured Story | 9242104 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2009/09/26/update-group-stands-ground-over-claims-that-nbc-employee-issued-anti-semitic-email/%2A%2AUPDATE%2A%2A+Group+Stands+Ground+Over+Claims+That+NBC+Employee+Issued+Anti-Semitic+Email2009-09-26+17%3A17%3A54Publius

**UPDATE** Politico: NBC Vehemently Denies Allegations Over Anti-Semitic Email

From Politico:

NBC News president Steve Capus fired back at Americans for Limited Government Friday, after the conservative group published an email allegedly from NBC producer Jane Stone to its director of media outreach Alex Rosenwald, with one line: “Bite me Jew Boy.”

“I’m still in shock, and outraged that this reckless organization would go out with such a defamatory, irresponsible statement,” Capus told POLITICO. “We have done a complete email analysis, all of our IT, all of our records.”

Here’s what both sides agree on: Stone responded yesterday to a mass email from ALG. (more…)

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Tags: ACORN, NBC
Posted Sep 25th 2009 at 4:22 pm in ACORN, Featured Story | 896255 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2009/09/25/politico-nbc-news-president-blasts-reckless-and-defamatory-alg/%2A%2AUPDATE%2A%2A+Politico%3A+NBC+Vehemently+Denies+Allegations+Over+Anti-Semitic+Email2009-09-25+23%3A22%3A21Publius

NBC Producer to Anti-ACORN Group: ‘Bite Me, Jew Boy!’

**UPDATE** Politico: NBC Vehemently Denies Allegations Over Anti-Semitic Email

**UPDATE 2** ALG Statement in Response to Alleged NBC Email

**UPDATE 3** NBC News Statement

**UPDATE 4**Group Stands Ground Over Claims That NBC Employee Issued Anti-Semitic Email

Apparently NBC “Dateline” producer Jane Stone or someone else who has access to her Blackberry has a problem with groups that oppose ACORN and with an ethnocultural minority.

When Stone received an email urging Congress to defund ACORN from Alex Rosenwald, director of media outreach for Americans for Limited Government, the following sentence came back to Rosenwald from Stone’s account: “Bite me, Jew Boy!”

Bite me Jew boy! –

Americans for Limited Government released the following statement:

Americans for Limited Government does not contend that NBC or its parent company GE, are anti-Semitic. What is highly disturbing, however, is that there clearly is a culture at NBC that has allowed this person who clearly has issues to go unchecked.

Ms Stone claims she did not send the offensive email. If that is not the case, we at ALG call upon her to help ascertain who did send it using her Blackberry and her email address. If Ms Stone did, in fact, send it, we at ALG call upon Ms Stone to apologize to Mr. Rosenwald, and we call upon the NBC hierarchy above Ms Stone to join her in issuing that apology.

I am told by fellow right-leaning journalists that getting rude and offensive emails from reporters in the mainstream media is a fairly common occurrence. (more…)

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Tags: Alex Rosenwald, ALG, Americans for Limited Government, Daily Show, Dan Mitchell
Posted Sep 25th 2009 at 2:22 pm in ACORN, Featured Story | 8842166 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/mvadum/2009/09/25/nbc-to-anti-acorn-group-bite-me-jew-boy/NBC+Producer+to+Anti-ACORN+Group%3A+%27Bite+Me%2C+Jew+Boy%21%272009-09-25+21%3A22%3A21Matthew+Vadum

Planting the Seeds: The Politicized Art Behind the ACORN Plan

Everything you needed to know about the unorthodox roll out of the now-notorious ACORN sting videos was hidden in plain sight in my Sept. 7 column, “Katie Couric, Look in the Mirror.” ACORN was not the only target of those videos; so were Katie, Brian, Charlie and every other mainstream media pooh-bah.

They were not going to report this blockbuster unless they were forced to. And they were. What’s more, it ain’t over yet. Not every hint I dropped in that piece about what was to come has played itself out yet.Stay tuned.

When filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe came to my office to show me the video of him and his friend, Hannah Giles, going to the Baltimore offices of ACORN – the nation’s foremost “community organizers” – dressed as a pimp and a prostitute and asking for – and getting – help for various illegal activities, he sought my advice. In the past, Mr. O’Keefe created brilliant social satire that rocked his college campus and even made its way on to the talk-radio and cable-news shows, but the magnitude of his latest adventure had the potential to rock the political establishment.

I was awed by Mr. O’Keefe’s guts and amazed by the footage, but explained that the mainstream media would try to kill this important and illuminating expose about a corrupt and criminal political racket, and that the well-funded political left would go into “war room” mode, with 25-year-old Mr. O’Keefe and 20-year-old cohort Miss Giles in the cross hairs. I felt I had a moral obligation to protect these young muckrakers from the left and from the media, and to devise a strategy that would force the media’s hand. (more…)

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Tags: ABC, ACORN, acorn scandal, Bertha Lewis, Brian Williams
Posted Sep 20th 2009 at 7:08 pm in ACORN, Featured Story, Media Criticism, News, Politics | 5858303 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2009/09/20/planting-the-seeds-the-politicized-art-behind-the-acorn-plan/Planting+the+Seeds%3A+The+Politicized+Art+Behind+the+ACORN+Plan2009-09-21+02%3A08%3A32Andrew+Breitbart

Dateline NBC: To Catch an ACORN Organizer

I’m not sure why I bothered to sign up for MySpace. My manager assured me that it would be good for my career, but that was a long time ago, way back when it was okay to call the President a liar. I signed up too late, because MySpace just isn’t cool anymore. The idea behind my page was to introduce a new generation to my stand-up comedy, and help me develop a fan base. Instead it’s making people think I’m a sexual predator. 

I get friend requests all the time now, from shirtless teenage boys who are into skateboarding, and old dudes, and I can tell right away, that it’s a cop. (I’m beginning to think there isn’t anybody really on MySpace anymore, just pedpophiles and cops.) Every police force in America has at least one or two full-time officers pretending to be teenagers, and trolling through MySpace at all hours of the day. They’re looking for depraved lonely men, longing to do something despicable, and arranging meet-ups at the mall. The next thing you know, they’re starring on “NBC Dateline: To Catch A Predator.”

Over the four years the NBC series was on the air “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen made a lucrative career out of setting up old men with fictional teenagers. He also got a lot of those men arrested. Apparently, intent to contribute to the delinquency of a fictional teenager is a crime in many jurisdictions.

The show was cancelled in December 2008. I’m guessing the producers were finding it hard to trap perverts anymore. With so many cops on MySpace, and the teenagers moved on to other social networking sites, I would guess they were starting to get cops hooking up accidentally. I was always hoping to catch the episode where two cops at the mall suddenly realize they had spent the last month online, having cyber-sex with each other.

(more…)

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Tags: ACORN, acorn scandal, Catch a Predator, Chris Hansen, Dateline
Posted Sep 18th 2009 at 1:40 pm in ACORN, Culture, Political Humor | 507492 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/tslagle/2009/09/18/dateline-nbc-to-catch-an-acorn-organizer/Dateline+NBC%3A+To+Catch+an+ACORN+Organizer2009-09-18+20%3A40%3A12Tim+Slagle

ACORN Story Fells the Big Oaks of Mainstream Media

From the Telegraph in UK, journalists across the pond continue to follow the ACORN scandal here:

If there’s one story that’s had it all in the past week it’s the series of undercover reporting stings that have uncovered the true nature of ACORN – the Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now. It’s got sex, misuse of taxpayer funds, the condoning of illegal activity by officials and connections to Barack Obama.

You would be forgiven for having missed it, however, because it’s got almost no play in the mainstream media. It wasn’t the “New York Times”, CNN or NBC who broke the story. Rather, it was two twenty-something independents with a few thousand dollars, a bit of time and a lot of guts.

(more…)

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Tags: ACORN, CNN, NBC, New York Times
Posted Sep 17th 2009 at 7:34 pm in ACORN, Media Criticism | 469495 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2009/09/17/acorn-story-fells-the-big-oaks-of-mainstream-media/ACORN+Story+Fells+the+Big+Oaks+of+Mainstream+Media+2009-09-18+02%3A34%3A36Publius

ACORN Story Grows But Mainstream Media Refuse to Cover It

From FoxNews.com:

This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings. But almost no one is covering it.

Bruce Springsteen once wrote: “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come).” I doubt he expected that story of love gone wrong would become ideal political commentary for the group known as ACORN.

The small scandal showing an embarrassing video of Baltimore ACORN staffers looking like they were giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel, is now national news. — This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings!

Only almost no one is covering it.

This is the news media in the era of Van Jones and President Obama. The major outlets cover what they want and create the themes they want. When they find something inconvenient, they let it pass. They didn’t like the Van Jones story, so they ignored it. The network news media liked the financial entity known as Fannie Mae, so they ignored that scandalous organization for years. ACORN is getting the same treatment. (more…)

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Tags: ABC, ACORN, acorn prostitute, acorn prostitute video, acorn prostitution
Posted Sep 14th 2009 at 10:27 pm in ACORN, Media Criticism, News, Politics | 2518209 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/publius/2009/09/14/acorn-story-grows-but-mainstream-media-refuse-to-cover-it/ACORN+Story+Grows+But+Mainstream+Media+Refuse+to+Cover+It2009-09-15+05%3A27%3A02Publius