I t’s Wednesday night on the NBC Nightly News-time for yet another installment of “The Fleecing of America,” the weekly series on government waste. Tonight’s episode stars a job training program in Puerto Rico, designed to move seasonal farm workers off welfare and into better-paying, permanent work. “Nothing wrong with that, right?” Tom Brokaw asks. […]
Media
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The Ideologically Invested
W hen President Clinton announced his economic plan in 1993, Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley had no doubt about what would happen. Clinton’s proposals, he predicted in a column in February 1993, would “cripple” the economy. While the plan was debated, this absolute certainty about its effects pervaded the Journal‘s discussion on both its […]
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Should Journalists Do Community Service?
T he Philadelphia Inquirer should not have been embarrassed last May when the Wall Street Journal uncovered a scandal in a Philadelphia charity. Even Pulitzer magnets like the Inky sometimes miss big stories right under their noses. But this was no ordinary case of being scooped by out-of-town competition. The foundation that the Journal exposed […]
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Cosmopolitics
G eorge Washington famously disdained faction. In his farewell address, he warned the nation against the “baneful effects of the spirit of party.” This dislike for partisanship may be the only connection between Washington and his namesake, the magazine George. Editor John F. Kennedy, Jr. describes George as post-partisan, an effort to engage more people […]
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Animal House Meets Church Lady
One moment it’s frat-boy humor; the next, it’s the old verities. Limbaugh, P.J. O’Rourke, and other comedians of the right love to have it both ways.
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Storylines: Get Me Rewrite
A very long time ago, when I was the manager of a listener-supported radio station, we were planning our annual on-air fundraising drive. “The only thing we have to sell,” one staffer said earnestly, “is our integrity.” A wise guy replied, “What do you think we can get for it?” Thanks to the poisonous blend […]
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Rush from Judgment
We used to expect reporters and editors to place events in their proper context. Post-O.J., post-Diana, and soon (we hope) post-Monica, perhaps it’s time to ask: What happened to news judgment?
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The Trouble With Teletubbies
Jerry Falwell was right: the Teletubbies are insidious, but not because they’re insinuating dubious ideas into the minds of one-year olds. The program is the culmination of PBS’s long drift toward commercialization.Â
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How Low Can You Go?
YOUR NAME HERE As public broadcasting has long shown, there is a thin line between philanthropy and advertising that is well on its way to being completely erased. Consider the recent proliferation of corporate logos on endowed professorships, as reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Stanford has a Yahoo! chair of information systems technology; […]
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Storylines: Tough Chat
A few years ago, people who thought liberals were too squeamish in public debate wondered how they could make it in the aggressive and strident forum of talk radio. [See Tom DeVries, “We’ll Talk About That: Can Liberals Do Radio?“ TAP, March-April 1996.] Today the same question has come up about another rough-and-tumble medium: political […]
