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I sometimes wonder if the media is working to make American primary votes worthless. Part of me thinks taking down candidates before they even reach a vote must be because the candidates are truly terrible, but Jay Rosen makes the case that it is all a bit of a circus.

Shades, maybe, of Howard Dean. No one (that is, on TV or in a paper) believed he was up to much until normal people actually started voting. 

EDIT: Looks like Rosen’s not the only one. On the Atlantic, there’s a brutal essay by Patrick Hruby, arguing that political TV has devolved to the level of sports TV. That is, entertaining, but only good when wins and losses are forgotten next season.

jayrosen:

Möbius Strip Journalism

I do my share of complaining about horse race reporting in politics. Well, more than my share. (Quick definition: horse race journalism is news about politics in which the only question that counts is: who’s gonna win?) But there’s a reason I complain about it. Sometimes the crazy passes by so quickly we don’t notice how fantastic it is that people get paid to pull this stuff off. Unless someone complains. Which someone is me.

Last night on MSNBC one of the horsiest race journalists around, Roger Simon of The Politico, offered an observation so exquisitely circular, meaningless and empty that I had to coin a new name for it: möbius strip journalism.

“The Möbius strip, also called the twisted cylinder, is a one-sided nonorientable surface obtained by cutting a closed band into a single strip, giving one of the two ends thus produced a half twist, and then reattaching the two ends.”  Link.

That’s what Simon does in this clip. He’s trying to speculate on the chances that Rick Santorum will come out a winner in New Hampshire. So this is what he says:

The problem for Santorum here is not getting in double digits, he will. The problem is how we in the media define Romney’s success or failure here. If Santorum can keep Romney’s margin of victory below ten percent; that is, if he can keep Romney to a single digit victory, Santorum will claim that he had a very good night and I think the media will agree with him. However, this is a tough state to do that in. Romney lives here. Neighboring governor. The polls show him 27 points up….

Now that’s some twisted cylinder reporting! One media person (Ed Schultz of MSNBC) asks another media person (Roger Simon of Politico) about Santorum’s chances of coming out with some kind of win (who’s gonna win? being the  ”one-sided nonorientable surface” I just told you about) and the media person’s answer is: Depends on what we media people say about it, but I can predict what we media people will say. There: I just did!

Now that’s “cutting a closed band into a single strip, giving one of the two ends thus produced a half twist, and then reattaching the two ends…” Isn’t it?

Watch the clip and see if you agree.

Time’s U.S. vs world edition covers. Misleading, but interesting. But does anyone read Time these days?

(Source: diarrheaworldstarhiphop)

Bad Boys Bail Bond, downtown Muncie, Ind. I’m in the city, which was the subject of the pioneering sociological study Middletown, to see how it has fared since manufacturing dried up. I’m blogging about my trip here: muncieblog.wordpress.com [Image: my flickr]

Bad Boys Bail Bond, downtown Muncie, Ind. I’m in the city, which was the subject of the pioneering sociological study Middletown, to see how it has fared since manufacturing dried up. I’m blogging about my trip here: muncieblog.wordpress.com

[Image: my flickr]

It’s World Press Freedom Day and Slate has Magnum images of journalists at work. Here’s Edward R. Murrow smoking and probably getting ready to end Senator McCarthy’s witch hunts.

It’s World Press Freedom Day and Slate has Magnum images of journalists at work. Here’s Edward R. Murrow smoking and probably getting ready to end Senator McCarthy’s witch hunts.

A fireman waits with his breathing mask and tank following a fire at a power plant in New York City. Working on my steez as a news photographer. A way to go yet I think. [my flickr]

A fireman waits with his breathing mask and tank following a fire at a power plant in New York City.

Working on my steez as a news photographer. A way to go yet I think.

[my flickr]

Sunday Times spams African leaders in investigation

The Sunday Times reports today how it uncovered Japanese officials bribing leaders of African nations to vote in favour of overturning the ban on whaling. There method was to lodge counter bids:

The reporters, posing as representatives of a billionaire conservationist, approached officials from pro-whaling countries and offered them an aid package to change their vote.

Now, to anyone familiar with the internet this might remind you of something.

DEAR HONORED FRIEND;,

I am writing to you as the representative of Mr CHARLES SIMPSON a renowned American conservationist. It has come to my attention that you have a vote on the International Whaling Committee and I want to seek your assistence.

I need to obtain some votes on that committee but I must do in secret because the big whale farming lobby closely watches my every move. That is why I reach out too you as a trusted & Honored friend.

if you send detials of your bank account I will be able to offer a great reward in exchange for your troubles.

This is a matter of UTMOST urgency please do not delay. Please do not discuss my offer with anyone. I appreciete your discretion in this delicate matter.

Yours most faithfully,

Ian Duncan

The New Yorker profiles WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Paul Assange

Lots of interesting stuff in here but one thing sticks out: the guy is secretive and very paranoid but also incredibly forgetful. It’s not a great combination.

‘The two men exchanged a look: was a government agency tampering with their plans? Assange waited anxiously, but it turned out that he had bought the ticket and neglected to confirm the purchase.’

Check out German magazine Der Spiegel’s offices, then go and read about their fact checking set up. [Scoop Silverman Flickr]

Check out German magazine Der Spiegel’s offices, then go and read about their fact checking set up. [Scoop Silverman Flickr]

Do national newspapers make people sad?

In their story on the brokenness or otherwise of British society this week, The Economist has this interesting idea.

Their newspapers, which seldom look on the sunny side of life, are much to blame. “NAME THE DEVIL BOYS—WE MUST NOT LET THEM HIDE”, roared the Mail on Sunday on January 24th, quoting the parents of the Edlington victims. Newspapers were no less lurid a century ago. But there is one big change: a shift in readership from local papers to national ones. Mr Cameron’s comfortable Witney constituents are dropping the Oxford Mail in favour of national titles or the television, which report the most gruesome stories from across the country, not just the county. In this way local crises, such as an outbreak of teenage stabbings in London in 2007 and 2008, become national panics, causing fear even in regions where the problem does not exist. And bad news travels best: the fact that London’s teenage-murder rate quietly halved last year was not widely reported outside the capital.

Not sure how much I buy it mainly because I’m not certain that the time-frame of the decline in national paper readership matches that of the the rest of the article. But then again, I don’t actually know…

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