Earthquake Rocks Washington!

5.9 on the Richter scale, centered in Virginia.

This probably goes without saying, but obviously God is telling Rick Perry to keep out of the White House.

News Of the World From Outside the Bubble

Those who get all their information from Fox News may not be aware that Britain's venerable tabloid, News Of The World, abruptly ended publication this week. And if you read that final edition of News Of the World, you won't find any particular reason for the sudden demise, which comes in spite of a relatively high circulation numbers.

This is the reason.

Cheer up though! Any staff that has been fired over the incidents have been encouraged to reapply at Rupert Murdoch's other tabloid The Sun, which currently publishes every day except Sunday. NOTW only published on Sunday. Hey, here's an idea - why not expand the Sun to 7 days? It'll be almost as if NOTHING WAS DONE AT ALL!

Oh anyway, you can't blame Fox News for not picking up this story - really no one is involved who is even familiar to Americans.

Hatching a Weatherman

I'm scooping Harry Shearer! An occasional feature on his Le Show radio program is the reading of especially egregious corrections to newspaper articles, usually from the LA Times. Well, I just sent this one to him. It concerns an article about Mark Kriski, KTLA weatherman who was missing from the airwaves last month due to a prolonged bout with pneumonia. Here are the corrections, one after the other.

[Corrected at 3:15 p.m.: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated that Kriski had been incubated for four days, rather than intubated.]

[Corrected at 3:34 p.m : A previous version of this post incorrected stated that Kriski was intubated for four days, instead of two weeks.}

Bonus points for the curly bracket, rather than square bracket, that ends the second correction!

NEWSMAX Now Left Leaning, Like the New York Times

They've even hired Judy Miller!

Never Forget Who The Real Victims Are

Shorter Breitbart: NOW look what you made me do!

The Gift Of Sloppy Journalism

"His son is working for the Daily Mail; it's a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer"

-The Beatles

The Daily Mail's Ian Drury (not to be confused with the deceased Stiff Records sensation) covered Prime Minister Gordon Brown's recent visit to Washington. Mr. Drury isn't thrilled with the Obama administration's choice of ceremonial gifts.

As he headed back home from Washington, Gordon Brown must have rummaged through his party bag with disappointment.

Because all he got was a set of DVDs. Barack Obama, the leader of the world's richest country, gave the Prime Minister a box set of 25 classic American films - a gift about as exciting as a pair of socks.

...Perhaps pertinently, given Britain is floundering in an economic slump, the DVD collection was thought to feature the movie of John Steinbeck's Great Depression novel, 'The Grapes Of Wrath'.

The gift also included the Oscar-winning boxing biopic 'Raging Bull' starring Robert Di Nero and Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho - maybe a comment on the PM's notorious short fuse?

And he will hope that at a General Election the British public do not shun his imploration for another term in office by thinking at the ballot box of the famous line from another of the movies, Casblanca: 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.'

I bow to no one in my love of snark, but this is just inaccurate snark. Even Amish babies know that "Frankly my dear I don't give a damn" is from GONE WITH THE WIND, not CASABLANCA. The quotable line from that Humphrey Bogart classic that applies here is "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Below, Drury's best guess at the contents of the DVD extravaganza. I have seen 21 of 'em, which is probably about 20 more than Drury.

Not Unlike Journalism

Over at Boxoffice Weekly, my podcast, I'm running with a story about the controversy about Richard Cheese and his appearance at the Coverville 500 concert, which I attended. I've been able to get find quotes by Cheese, the guy who ran the concert, and the guy whose cellphone Cheese snatched up while he was in the act of recording Cheese. I cannot make that last part any clearer and believe me, I just tried five times.

I almost feel, for a change, like a real reporter. Usually I simply regurgitate wire stories about celebrities... but then again, in showbiz news that's what the real reporters do too. Perhaps the only difference between me and a showbiz reporter in the Mainstream Media (TM) is I'm making no money at all, while the other guy is making less and less every year. We'll eventually meet for coffee, to interview each other. And afterwards we'll sneak out without paying.

Start the Revolution Without Me

My previous post was jumpstarted by footage of a man grabbing a mic from a Fox News reporter, which I watched at work without sound. What I'm reading now is that the assailant was actually stealing an iPhone and the mic probably just looked like another cool gadget to him.

So he wasn't making any kind of damn statement at all, except "I'm stupid enough to attempt robbery on live television".

Skot's comment intrigues me - do bloggers share a distrust of news that the rest of the country doesn't? Well, I have taken most things I see on TV with a sack of rock salt (suitable for clearing snowy driveways) for a long time now. And WAMK has made no secret of the fact that he believes the MSM has a liberal bias. So yes, all bloggers share the view.

Something that fascinates me: Chris Matthews. If you're on the left, he's practically a neo-con. If you're on the right, he's a flaming liberal. No matter what he does, everybody thinks he's biased in the opposite direction. Matthews has a unique gift: whatever it is that allows people to blend with ease in various gatherings, he's got the opposite of that.

As far as the blogosphere, the entire news media shares that gift. No matter who you ask, the one thing that everyone agrees on is the news is lying to us and trying to force an agenda down our throats, but once in a while they throw our side a bone to appear balanced. An objective observer might note that this pan-spectrum jaundice suggests the media ARE fair.

But there are no objective observers nowadays, are there?

Take Back the Morning Show

Watch this clip on Fox Morning. During a New York man-in-the-street interview about those iPhones, another man in the street steals the mic and attempts to run off with it, screaming expletives. He's shortly subdued by Fox goons; the interview continues apace.

I'd like to think this means something. Not by itself of course, but after the recent incident on Joe Scarborough's MSNBC morning show where a reporter refused to read a story about Paris Hilton and even attempted to set the copy afire, could we be witnessing the long-awaited revolution that will not be televised? After years of news sliding from "the fourth estate" to "hey, we only give the public what it wants" is the pendulum about to swing back, perhaps made to do so by force?

It could happen, and here's why - what would you rather watch, another story about John Edward's hair or a violent, colorful argument about that story? The argument! It's a sure-fire ratings grabber, PLUS the news people can feel better about themselves filling the air time with it. You can say it's onanism, reporters reporting about reporting, but so what? Isn't it still better than a straight Britney Spears piece?

It's a ridulous path to the return of responsible journalism but at least it's a path. Next step - firing all sexy anchor people. Don't worry, they'll find work somewhere.