Media

Data and anecdotes

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

Among the outcomes produced by a market economy, real wages are arguably the most important single variable for most people. With inflation rising around the world, and sensitive prices like those of food and petroleum going up a lot, most people’s living standards depend mainly on whether wages grow faster than prices. I got a [...]

Forced to fight renegades

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

The Maliki government’s offensive in Basra, directed against (some) Shiite militias seems to have taken most observers by surprise. Possibly as a result, reporting of the event has been unusually revealing about the implicit presumptions that guide the news we get to read. The New York Times, for example, leads with a photo of “Fighters [...]

Crikey going cheap

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

Club Troppo is organising a discounted group subscription to Crikey.

Misquoted or badly edited?

Sunday, February 3rd, 2008

As anyone who’s dealt with the mainstream media knows, any time you’re directly involved in a story, you’re likely to see that it’s been misreported.
I was interviewed recently about the economic problems facing the new government and said, several times, that we would be better off if both parties had not committed themselves to large [...]

Background noise

Thursday, October 4th, 2007

So I thought I’d watch Quantum as they had a story on fuel cells, but it was unwatchable because of the silly and obtrusive background music. My wife alerted me to this trend a while ago. Background music has escaped from the establishing shots where it’s long been standard, and now continues throughout the program, even when people are speaking.

One endless Rathergate

Sunday, July 29th, 2007

The rightwing blogosphere has spent the last week or two trying to discredit a soldier, Scott Beauchamp, who wrote a “Baghdad Diary” for The New Republic, which included various examples of casual brutality on the part of US soldiers. (nothing on the scale of Abu Ghraib or other proven cases).

Meltdown at the Oz, Part II

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

Following the bizarre attack on Clive Hamilton a few weeks ago, the Oz editorial page gives a full length response to the various online sources (mostly not named, but Peter Brent at Mumble cops the most flak, and Crikey is obviously an intended target) who bagged Tuesday’s silly beatup of a no-news opinion poll.

Stealth correction at the journal of record

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

After Glen Greenwald took a few bites out the latest NYTimes transcription, by White House stenographer Michael Gordon, of Administration/military talking points in the campaign for war against Iran somebody at the Gray Lady apparently decided that the piece might be improved by a mininal amount of actual reporting, such as the fact that the claims in question have been repeatedly denied by the Iranian government (with backing, although this is not mentioned, from a large number of independent analysts).

Women in Art

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

I once doubted that user-produced video would amount to much. This beautiful montage is one of many on YouTube that prove me wrong. (Via Jeff Weintraub, via Norm Geras)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUDIoN-_Hxs

On the other hand, it remains to be seen whether I can make the necessary code work. In the meantime, go here