Pew: Newspapers Continue To Decline

After two dreadful years, most sectors of the industry saw revenue begin to recover in some, but not all sectors of the industry, according to a new Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism report. With some notable exceptions, cutbacks in newsrooms eased. And while still more talk than action, some experiments with new revenue models began to show signs of blossoming.

Among the major sectors, only newspapers suffered continued revenue declines last year—an unmistakable sign that the structural economic problems facing newspapers are more severe than those of other media. When the final tallies are in, we estimate 1,000 to 1,500 more newsroom jobs will have been lost—meaning newspaper newsrooms are 30% smaller than in 2000.

Driving People To Vote Against There Own Self-Interest And Moral Standards

In a startling admission from a major Tea Party champion, former Fox News host Glenn Beck said Friday that race may be a motivating factor in the Tea Party’s opposition to President Obama.

BECK: And I issued a challenge to Tea Party members. … [Gingrich] is a progressive. … If you have a big government progressive, or a big government progressive in Obama, one in Newt Gingrich, one in Obama, ask yourself this, Tea Party: is it about Obama’s race? Because that’s what it appears to be to me. If you’re against him but you’re for this guy, it must be about race.

The comment is striking coming from Beck, who organized major Tea Party events and strongly defended the movement against charges of racism.

While racism may be part of the motivating factor in the Tea Party’s opposition to President Obama, the other more significant factor may be the anti-Obama, anti-Democrat, and other fear-mongering against "the they" who plot to destroy America. Fear-mongering waged by Glenn Beck, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, all of Conservative talk radio, and other conservative propaganda mills supported by conservative billionaires.

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda is often biased, with facts selectively presented (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political, or other type of agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare.

The next article down in this news blog is about conservative columnist David Frum, who was speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, blasting Fox News for delivering an “alternative knowledge system,” otherwise know as propaganda.

Related:

• When Did The GOP Lose Touch With Reality?

David Frum: Fox News Creates Alternative (False) News

Raw Story By David Edwards

Conservative columnist David Frum, who was speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, blasted Fox News on Sunday for creating an “alternative knowledge system.”

In an article published by New York Magazine in late November, Frum had argued that conservative media like Fox News and talk radio “immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information.”

Watch this video from CNN’s Reliable Sources,
broadcast Dec. 11, 2011.

In an appearance on CNN Sunday, Frum cited claims made on Fox News that President Barack Obama was proposing a “new Christmas tree tax,” something that was found by both The Florida Times-Union and PolitiFact Oregon to be not true.

“It fed into a story about this Muslim-y kind of president trying to destroy a Christian holiday,” Frum explained to CNN’s Howard Kurtz. “To make this a ground for a cultural conflict, to create a sense in large numbers of people they are being persecuted and attacked at a time when the country is in so much trouble, that’s how this thing is fed.”

“The question is what is the impact on the viewer?” he continued. “And we know, for example, that people that watch a lot of Fox come away knowing a lot less about important world events. That’s a correlation that we know.”

Recent polling appears to back up Frum’s assertion.

Fairleigh Dickinson University found last month that “some outlets, especially Fox News, lead people to be even less informed than those who say they don’t watch any news at all.”

“For example, people who watch Fox News, the most popular of the 24-hour cable news networks, are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all (after controlling for other news sources, partisanship, education and other demographic factors),” they wrote. “Fox News watchers are also 6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government than those who watch no news.”

New GOP Data Shows No Need For Strict Voter Photo ID

The Repub­li­can National Lawyers Asso­ci­a­tion (RNLA) in an attempt to dis­credit a NAACP report this week on the lack of voter fraud evi­dence has bol­stered the view that there is no need for voter ID laws, imposed by many states. The RNLA pro­duced data show­ing 46 states and var­i­ous con­vic­tions for voter fraud. Pre­sum­ably by their absence, 4 states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia had no convictions.

View­ing the data for the period 2000–2010, the report by its own account shows there is no link between voter fraud in states and the need for stricter voter ID laws. The data shows that dur­ing the entire 10 year period, 21 states had only 1 or 2 con­vic­tions for some form of voter irreg­u­lar­ity. And some of these 21 states have the strictest form of voter ID laws based on a find­ing of 2 or less con­vic­tions in ten years. Five states had a total of three con­vic­tions over a ten year period. Rhode Island had 4 con­vic­tions for the same 10 years. Tak­ing a close look at the RNLA data shows 30 states, includ­ing the Dis­trict of Colum­bia had 3 or less voter fraud con­vic­tions for a 10 year period.

Voter ID laws enacted now in over half the states, require vot­ers to present some form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as a require­ment to vote. Four­teen states require a gov­ern­ment issued photo ID when vot­ing in per­son. At the time of reg­is­ter­ing to vote, other states like Kansas and Alabama fur­ther demand proof of cit­i­zen­ship beyond the fed­eral legal require­ment that cit­i­zens swear they are cit­i­zens. Kansas had one con­vic­tion for voter fraud in ten years; Alabama had three con­vic­tions in the same time period. Dur­ing the 2011 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, five states — Wis­con­sin, Texas, Ten­nessee, Alabama and South Car­olina — joined Geor­gia and Indi­ana by enact­ing the strictest form of photo ID require­ment for vot­ers, and most of these newest changes will first come into effect for the 2012 elections.

The RNLA says the voter ID laws are needed to pre­vent against dou­ble vot­ing, non-citizen vot­ing, fic­ti­tious voter reg­is­tra­tion and voter imper­son­ation. To hear Repub­li­cans tell the tale, one would think there has been mas­sive voter/election fraud neces­si­tat­ing the need for stricter voter ID laws across the coun­try. Now the Repub­li­cans’ own data dis­pels their ram­pant voter fraud myth. A closer scrutiny of the RNLA data shows voter fraud has no cor­re­la­tion to need­ing strict voter ID laws.

Full Arti­cle: OpE­d­News – Arti­cle: New GOP Data Shows No Need For Voter ID.

Twitter and the Campaign

The political conversation on Twitter is markedly different than that on blogs -- and both are decidedly different than the political narrative presented by the mainstream press, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism that analyzed more than 20 million tweets, the online conversation and traditional news coverage about the campaign from May 2 through November 27.

The study finds that campaign discourse on Twitter tended to be more opinionated and often more negative about candidates than on blogs and in the news. The Twitter conversation about a candidate was also more likely to change from week to week than on blogs.

The study also updates the tone and amount of attention to each candidate in news coverage overall, in an elite sub-sample of national news outlets, and in the political blogosphere. The work is part of a new ongoing analysis of the race for president conducted by PEJ that will continue through the election, tracking the amount of attention paid to the candidates in different media platforms and the tone of that attention.

Read the full report for more details on these subjects:

• The Campaign Conversation: Twitter vs. Blogs
• The Candidates on Twitter
• Update: The News Coverage Narrative
• An update on overall coverage of the candidates by news outlets and blogs
• Update: Candidate Blog Conversation
  

See also Pew's report on The Media Primary: How News Media and Blogs Have Eyed the Presidential Contenders during the First Phase of the 2012 Race

SCOTUS Grants Stay On Lower Courts' Redrawn Redistricting Maps

Developing Story...

The Supreme Court of the United States late today threw a wrench into Texas' Democratic and Republican Primary Election and County Convention schedule.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's applications for stay of the lower courts' redrawn redistricting maps presented to Justice Scalia and by him referred to the Court are granted until the court hears oral arguments:

It is ordered that the orders issued by the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas on November 23, 2011, in case Nos. 5:11-CV-360, and 5:11-CV-788, and the order of November 26, 2011, in case No. 5:11-CV-360, are hereby stayed pending further order of the Court.

The stay blocks the court-drawn maps for legislative and congressional districts in Texas, telling the lawyers involved to be ready for oral arguments on Monday, January 9, 2012.

The state asked the court for a stay on maps for congressional, Texas House and Texas Senate maps. The court's order asks for briefs from the lawyers by December 21, replies by January 3.

Candidates are already filing for office, working against a Thursday, December 15 deadline. Since the stay leaves no defined districts for which to file, that deadline is probably now meaningless, at least for the congressional and state legislative candidates. The current district maps could be replaced with different district maps, if they are redrawn after the Supreme Court rules.

In its request for a stay, the state suggested the congressional and legislative primaries could be delayed from March 6 to May 22. The other primaries — for President, U.S. Senate, and so on — will remain in March. Texas could decide to have split primary elections, or possibly to move the entire election to May 22. The Democratic and Republican county and senate district conventions, originally scheduled for late March, as follow up to the election on March 6, will also have to be rescheduled to possibly early to mid May 2012. Moving the county and senate district conventions to mid May would in turn impact the Democratic Party's state convention scheduled to start on July 8, 2012.

More analysis @ SCOTUSblog

Order of the court:

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2011
APPEALS – JURISDICTION NOTED
PERRY, GOV. OF TX, ET AL. V. PEREZ, SHANNON, ET AL.
PERRY, GOV. OF TX, ET AL. V. DAVIS, WENDY, ET AL.
PERRY, GOV. OF TX, ET AL. V. PEREZ, SHANNON, ET AL.

The applications for stay presented to Justice Scalia and by him referred to the Court are granted, and it is ordered that the orders issued by the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas on November 23, 2011, in case Nos. 5:11-CV-360, and 5:11-CV-788, and the order of November 26, 2011, in case No. 5:11-CV-360, are hereby stayed pending further order of the Court. In addition, the applications for stay are treated as jurisdictional statements, and in each case probable jurisdiction is noted. The cases are consolidated and a total of one hour is allotted for oral argument. The briefs of appellants and appellees, not to exceed 15,000 words, are to be filed simultaneously with the Clerk and served upon opposing counsel on or before 2 p.m., Wednesday, December 21, 2011. Reply briefs, not to exceed 15,000 words, are to be filed simultaneously with the Clerk and served upon opposing counsel on or before 2 p.m., Tuesday, January 3, 2012. The cases are set for oral argument on Monday, January 9, 2012, at 1 p.m.

Words That Don't Work

by George Lakoff, Nation of Change

Progressives had some fun last week with Frank Luntz, who told the Republican Governors’ Association that he was scared to death of the Occupy movement and recommended language to combat what the movement had achieved. But the progressive critics mostly just laughed, said his language wouldn’t work, and assumed that if Luntz was scared, everything was hunky-dory. Just keep on saying the words Luntz doesn’t like: capitalism, tax the rich, etc.

It’s a trap.

Think Rick Perry's Collapsing Campaign is Funny? The Joke's On You, Texas

by Forrest Wilder, The Texas Observer

Rick Perry's presidential campaign is collapsing faster than a $10 tent in a hurricane. ... Perry’s unexpectedly rapid demise should prompt, if nothing else, some self-reflection. What’s the matter with Texas? I’ll take a stab at it.

First, there’s no real opposition. Texas is now a one-party state, which is admittedly not news. (Some wags call it a two-party state: the Republican Party and the tea party). The Democrats are disorganized, dispirited, and seemingly incapable or unwilling to capitalize on the untapped potential of Latino voters in parts of the state like Houston and the Rio Grande Valley. They don’t put much effort into encouraging many young Latinos to vote.

Also, there are few authentically independent institutions in Texas—partisan or not—to push back against the free-market and religious fundamentalism of the state GOP. Vibrant grassroots coalitions could energize a moribund system and keep politicians on their toes. Plus, they’re just good for morale. In the absence of opposition, Perry and his allies in right-wing groups like Empower Texans can toe a hard line without consequence. Witness how they rammed through a brutal state budget that gouged $4 billion out of public schools. Where was the mass mobilization against those cuts? In California, Ohio and Wisconsin right-wing governors have faced the wrath of people in the streets and in the voting booth. There was too little of that in Texas.

But then it’s easy to suffer from hangdog-ness here. Hard to get jazzed about participating in the democratic process when you sense that the game is rigged. Perry is the product of a political system controlled by a small group of special interests and billionaires. He’s their man. Entrenched business interests appreciate the Texas Enterprise Fund grants, the rubber-stamped permits to pollute, the cheer-leading for dream schemes like the Trans-Texas Corridor and mandatory HPV vaccinations. If Perry’s a joke, then the joke’s on us.

Read the full article @ The Texas Observer

Between 2008 And 2010, 30 Big Corporations Spent More Lobbying Washington Than They Paid In Income Taxes

A report released this month by Public Campaign demonstrates just how important it is for Americans to battle corporate special interests and reclaim our democracy.

The group’s research finds that thirty big corporations actually spent more money lobbying the federal government between 2008 and 2010 than they spent in taxes. For example, General Electric — one of the top 10 most profitable companies in the world — got a net tax rebate of $4.7 billion during this period.

Meanwhile, it spent $84 million lobbying the federal government.

Think Progress: Between 2008 And 2010, 30 Big Corporations Spent More Lobbying Washington Than They Paid In Income Taxes

Postal Service Cuts Could !nterfere With Elections, Delay Vote By Mail Ballots

With Con­gress debat­ing plans to shut down post offices and pos­si­bly elim­i­nate Sat­ur­day mail deliv­ery, some elec­tion offi­cials are wor­ried that bring­ing the U.S. Postal Ser­vice out of the red could harm elec­tion pro­ce­dures — per­haps even in time for the Novem­ber 2012 pres­i­den­tial election.

In Novem­ber the Postal Ser­vice announced it lost $5.1 bil­lion in fis­cal 2011, not includ­ing the man­dated $5.5 bil­lion owed to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to pre­fund retiree health ben­e­fit payments. For the ser­vice to return to prof­itabil­ity, it must cut $20 bil­lion by 2015.

Sen­ate leg­is­la­tion would pro­tect Sat­ur­day ser­vice for the next two years, but a House bill would per­mit a reduc­tion to five-day-per-week mail deliv­ery six months after enact­ment. The Postal Ser­vice has said it intends to cut Sat­ur­day ser­vice unless Con­gress requires it to continue.

Steve Mon­teith, the Postal Service’s man­ager of trans­ac­tion cor­re­spon­dence, said tak­ing away Sat­ur­day deliv­ery or shut­ting post office doors could force elec­tion offi­cials to send bal­lots out a day ear­lier to make sure they arrive on time.

Cal­i­for­nia Repub­li­can Rep. Dar­rell Issa, who chairs the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Com­mit­tee, co-sponsored the House bill. The service’s finan­cial losses, he said, put elec­tions at risk.

“Fun­da­men­tal reforms are needed to pro­tect the finan­cial via­bil­ity of the United States Postal Ser­vice, includ­ing its ser­vices that are inte­gral to vot­ing,” Issa said.

Full Arti­cle: The Daily Caller.

Who Killed the Postal Service?

The Postal Service just announced roughly $3 billion in service cuts that will slow down the delivery of first-class mail for the first time in 40 years. Starting in April, it plans to shutter more than half of its 461 mail processing centers, stretching out the time it will take to ship everything from Netflix DVDs to magazines. One-day delivery of stamped envelopes will all but certainly become a thing of the past.

The announcement is just the latest sign of a sad and increasingly dire fact: the Postal Service is in shambles. This past fiscal year, it lost a mere $5.1 billion. In 2012, it's facing a record $14.1 billion shortfall and possible bankruptcy. In order to turn a profit, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says the agency needs to cut $20 billion from its annual budget by 2015. That's almost a third of its yearly costs.

How did it come to this?

The culprits include the Internet, labor expenses, and, as with pretty much every problem our country faces now, Congress.

Obama's Kansas Speech a Game-Changer

The Democratic Strategist

WaPo columnist Greg Sargent takes a look at President Obama's speech in Osawatomie Kansas, and finds it to be a critical point of departure, "a moral and philosophical framework within which literally all of the political and policy battles of the next year will unfold, including the biggest one of all: The presidential campaign itself." Citing Obama's emphasis on "inequality itself as a moral scourge and as a threat to the country's future," Sargent continues:

Obama's speech in Kansas, which just concluded, was the most direct condemnation of wealth and income inequality, and the most expansive moral defense of the need for government activism to combat it, that Obama has delivered in his career...

The clash of visions Obama tried to set the stage for today -- a philosophical and moral argument over government's proper role in regulating the economy and restoring our future -- is seen by Dems as more favorable to them than the GOP's preferred frame for Campaign 2012, i.e., a referendum on the current state of the economy and on Obama's efforts to fix it. Hence his constant references to the morality of "fairness."

"We simply cannot return to this brand of you're-on-your-own economics if we're serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country," Obama said, in what will probably be the most enduring line of the speech. A number of people on Twitter immediately suggested a new shorthand: "YoYo Economics."

That line is key in another way. Dems believe inequality will be central in 2012 because they think there's been a fundamental shift in how Americans view the economy, one rooted in the plight of the middle class and in the trauma created by the financial crisis.

A New York Times editorial affirms Sargent's evaluation of the President's speech: