The American people are not getting access to international news

When U.S. President Barack Obama spoke in Cairo this week, he delivered a message of openness. "There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground," he told a global audience of billions. But if he convinced his listeners abroad, a lingering irony will catch up with the president upon his return home: Americans themselves are literally disconnected from foreign news; they are not "listening" at all. Foreign news stations are not broadcast in the United States, meaning that for all but the extended-cable watcher, seeing things from another point of view is, well, impossible.

writes Cyril Blet at Foreign Policy (ht-Richard Sambrook)

Americans have displayed for a long time an insulated stance to foreign news.Given that TV news is still the way that most of the population consume news it is worrying that foreign news channels get such little exposure on the cable networks.

The problem is partly due to the cable companies policy.

cable companies claim that international stations simply do not attract large enough audiences for advertisers to be enticed. Offering foreign news in any but the most expanded cable packages would be a profit-losing venture. Instead, cable companies have invited foreign channels to be featured in a pay-extra international news tier, but the international stations balk at that plan, insisting that they deserve to be wrapped in the same package as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.

Nevertheless the irony of Barack Obama's reaching out is quite telling

US press accused of not challenging over the fiscal stimulus package

The American Press was vilified for never challenging the basis of the Iraq war and now it seems that the same may be true of President Obama's stimulation package.(ht-Jay Rosen)

Media matters reports on the coverage that the mainstream broadcasters gave to the view that the package is simply not big enough to solve the problem

A Media Matters review of the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news programs from January 25 through February 15 found that of the 59 broadcasts that addressed the economic stimulus package and debate in Congress during the three-week period leading up to and immediately following its passage, only three of those broadcasts included discussion of whether that package was big enough, despite statements from many economists that it may not be.

NYT considers a pay wall.

That is according to the comments of Executive Editor Bill Keller as reported by the Huffington Post.

In an online question-and-answer exchange with readers this week, Keller said that although advertising generates the bulk of online revenue, "a lively, deadly serious discussion continues within The Times about ways to get consumers to pay for what we make."

adding that

Possibility include charging for full-access subscriptions, developing a micro-payment model in which readers pay a few pennies each time they click on a page and selling news to be distributed on reading devices, as the Times already does with Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle.

American media guilty of a liberal conspiracy?

How I would have loved to have had my ear against the door outside of the Boston Globe’s conference room on the morning of October 30th.
“A British paper discovered that Barack Obama’s aunt is living in squalor in a slum in South Boston.”“A British paper!?!?”
The Boston Globe, headquartered in South Boston, had the story in its back yard. Yet it was the Times Online that first broke the news that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s aunt is living illegally in the US despite being served a deportation order several years ago.

writes Evan Lips over at New Statesman
Does this the state of the American press? Evan claims that

There have been several instances where the media – confronted with relevant news regarding Barack Obama – has decided simply to remain silent.

So has there been a liberal conspiracy.Well the writer points to a number of examples that cover a range of issues and sums up with the comment

It may have been beneficial to American voters if more British news groups had covered our election.

New Yorkers will get a taste of Middle England

The Daily Mail is to be printed in New York.

On the back of UK news sites proving popular across the Atlantic,the paper has agreed a deal with Jersy based Alpha Graphics to print and distribute from January 2009.

Paid Content reports that

Mail Online has built up a large overseas audience: 67.8 percent of its 17.8 million unique users in September were from outside the UK according to ABCe, and most of those were from the US. But it remains to be seen whether UK newspapers can replicate foreign success in print format

The sign of the Times for the media industry-Palin doesn't read papers

Rather worrying or is it a sign of the Times?

It is being reported that Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin cannot name a newspaper or magazine that she read regulary before she was picked as a candidate by John McCain.

In the past numerous hands would have been thrown up in horror that someone a heartbeat away from the button appears to have no knowledge of current or world affairs.

But is this the way the world is going.Now we no longer have time for sitting with a papers or magazine,instead intent to get our information on the move.

Perhaps this should make the newspaper industry sit up and take notice

Palin of course may have an excuse,top job,large family and plenty of advisors.But then you have to worry don't you if you were an American

On the American newspaper front

For those followers of the American printed word,a couple of good pieces over the last couple of days( Hat Tip Adrian Monck)

How long can The New York Times continue to exist as an ink-and-paper entity? writes Jeff Bercovici at New Media.

Commenting on Vivian Schiller's musings on the paper that

"First, newspapers are not going anywhere," Advertising revenue may be in decline, but publishing newspapers is still a very profitable business and we intend to keep our presses running for a long time to come.
"Second, online advertising revenue is increasing at a double-digit clip, and with our brand and audience we're well positioned to capture our fair share."

Bercovici points out that he was

only half-right on both counts. Publishing newspapers is still a very profitable business -- but not for the Times, which has to borrow money to pay its crippling dividend. And online ad revenue is increasing at a double-digit clip -- but not at the Times, where they were up only 5.5 percent in July.

Meanwhile the debate about the Wall Street Journal continues at the New York Times.During its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch there was a great amount of debate over whether it would go downmarket.

What strikes Joe Nocera at the New York Times was that

how little business news the first section of the paper contained.and he claims that Murdoch

believes that the country is yearning for a national conservative daily, so that is where he is taking The Wall Street Journal. He is also an old-fashioned news hound, so he’s pushing for straighter, snappier, less analytical stories.

How the American media is following the economic slowdown

Project for excellence in Journalism have been tracking the American media's coverage of the economic slowdown,particularly tracking the coverage against the movements in the economy.

The study found that

the connection between media coverage and economic events has often been uneven. Sometimes, coverage has lagged months behind economic activity, when the storyline was dependent on government data. Other times, coverage has tracked events erratically, as with housing and inflation. But when the story is easier to tell, as in the case of gas prices, coverage has been closely tied to what is actually occurring in the marketplace.

Strangely the study found that

The economy has been a bigger story in older media—print, the three network evening newscasts and traditional news radio—and a noticeably smaller one in the newer—the more opinion-oriented platforms of cable TV and talk radio.

and in America in the period from Jan 2007 to June 2008,it overtook the Iraq war in popularity although the Presidential campaign leads by a long way

News of Iraq and Afghanistan falling out of favour with American audiences

An interesting article in the New York Times today explains how the American Tv networks have scaled back their coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

On top of that the networks can no longer justify keeping full time bureaus and are scaling back staffing levels and cannot compete for airtime with the presidential primaries.

As the Democratic primaries come to an end,the Project for excellence in journalism has concluded that despite claims to the contrary

Democrat Barack Obama has not enjoyed a better ride in the press than rival Hillary Clinton

and

the dominant personal narratives in the media about Obama and Clinton were almost identical in tone, and were both twice as positive as negative, according to the study, which examined the coverage of the candidates’ character, history, leadership and appeal—apart from the electoral results and the tactics of their campaigns

Indeed the evidence after the controversy over Obama's Pastor and Clinton criticising the media on being soft on her opponent actually swung to an overall negative coverage of the Democratic candidate for President

How Associated Press is distorting the US newspaper market

Another example of how Nick Davies' arguments are proving popular.

Over at Pajamas media,Steve Borris looks at the effect of Associated Press on the American media.

At face value, the AP seems like a good thing, allowing newspapers to pool their resources to keep costs of reporting non-local news low. But it has always been of questionable value to news consumers, reducing competition among newspapers.

For Steve the real problem today is

not the number of newspapers we now have, but that they refuse to compete with each other, a symptom of the AP-created culture of collaboration over competition

and the

creation of a news supply chain that reliably turns out monolithic, center-left news. Each evening, the New York Times and Washington Post coordinate their stories, creating what is erroneously referred to as the “national conversation,” but is really how the world looks to editors writing for audiences in the nation’s liberal centers of money and power

Another decent into oblivion for American hard news coverage

Just when America needs its Jeremy Paxman it is poised to get its Vernon Kay.

writes Charles Lawrence over at First Post.The news doing the gossip rounds is that Larry King i going to be replaced on CNN by Ryan Seacrest,who made his name on the American version of Simon Cowell.

Not mincing his words,Charles describes him as

the ultimate in vanilla sponge broadcasting

and says it will be

a giant step in the castration of American journalism

Whereas King has interviewed all the major politians in his long career,Seacrest has appeared on Gladiators and Wild Animal Games

ABC under fire for televised debate

A shameful night for the American media is Greg Mitchell's verdict on last nights televised debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton

ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia. They, and their network, should hang their collective heads in shame.

is how he describes it wandering how such major issues like Iraq,

had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent "bitter" gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin -- while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

I'm glad that it is not just over here where politics is trivialised

When off the record means on the record

Or is it the other way around and does this show the differences between journalism on either side of the Atlantic?

One of Barack Obama's advisors is forced to resign over remarks made to the Scotsman newspaper in an interview.Samantha Powers was quoted as saying that Hillary Clinton was a "monster".

The comments given in an on the record interview to Gerri Peev.

The story as told by Fraser Nelson is as follows

It was an on-the-record interview but after Powers misspoke she instructed Peev “that’s off the record”. Peev had made no such agreement, and ran with the story

After the remarks were picked up by US websites the Scotsman reports that

Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who made the remark, said: "With deep regret, I am resigning from my role as an adviser to the Obama campaign. I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose of the Obama campaign. And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months."

Kirsty McLuckie writing in the paper thinks it was justified in publishing the comments

SOME say it is unfair to have quoted the member of Barack Obama's campaign team who blurted out "Hillary Clinton is a monster" to a Scotsman journalist and immediately claimed it as off the record as well as off the cuff. But don't believe that anyone who is anywhere near a presidential hopeful at this stage in the game ever says anything that isn't carefully scripted. Even the denial that it was ever said will have been worked on by a team of advisers before the off-the-cuff

But was the paper right or should it have used its discretion?

The affair has also shown up the difference between UK and US journalism.Iain Martin says the affair shows that

American hacks are often too polite and trusting of politicians' motives. Only this late in the race for the nomination is the press asking serious questions of Obama

For him the differences are that on the one hand

The Americans, who have a knock-about tradition from the last century which they like to forget, take pride in having constructed a full-blown 'profession', equal to the law and medicine, with academic posts, a literature on the subject and very self-important prize ceremonies. Fine, but I blame Watergate.

Whilst on this side of the pond

the Brits as a breed have tended to be more rumbustious, cheekier, a little more inquisitive and wary of the powerful. There are excesses, but overall the sense is of British journalism being noisier and more vibrant. Competition is fierce, which until the age of the internet it was not in the US. And that might be the problem.

McCain gets the most media coverage in the States

An interesting survey on Primary coverage from the Project for excellence in Journalism.


They have tracked the media coverage of the candidates in the States and conclude

With Florida winner John McCain getting about 75% more coverage than Mitt Romney, and with Mike Huckabee almost invisible, the press appeared conspicuously close to turning McCain into the presumptive nominee last week

Across both the parties up to 3rd Feb,McCain also leads with 37.4% of stories,closely followed by Barack Obama on 34% and Hillary Clinton on 32%

NYT selects its democratic for 2008

The New York Times has come out in favour of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

In its editorial this morning,the paper says

The Times’s editorial board strongly recommends that they select Hillary Clinton as their nominee for the 2008 presidential election.

adding

By choosing Mrs. Clinton, we are not denying Mr. Obama’s appeal or his gifts. The idea of the first African-American nominee of a major party also is exhilarating, and so is the prospect of the first woman nominee. “Firstness” is not a reason to choose. The times that false choice has been raised, more often by Mrs. Clinton, have tarnished the campaign

Headline of the day.

It was Martin Luther King day in the States yesterday and the New York post captures one of the moments

BILL HAS A 'DREAM'
EX PREZ NODS OFF DURING MLK AWARD PRESENTATION as the paper reports

Bill Clinton showed yesterday why he made it into the book "The Art of Napping."
During an appearance at the Convent Avenue Baptist Church in Harlem, the former president was caught nodding off.
Clinton was there during a service to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., while his wife was nearby at Abyssinian Baptist Church, where she was endorsed by its minister, Rev. Calvin Butts.

Replace reporters with a betting index

There has been much critisism of the BBC over the amount of people that are covering the US Primaries and of journalists getting the results wrong in New Hampshire.

But replacing them with a betting index?

This post though perhaps goes a little too far

Why should the BBC spend so much on reporting on the Democrat and Republican primaries, when it can just quote the betting prices, in the same way it mentions the FTSE 100 index? In principle, such prices should convey all available information about Clinton's, Obama's or McCain's prospects cheaply and efficiently, saving the huge cost of having a mob of reporters over there. When the Beeb is trying to cut 2500 jobs, you'd think it'd seize upon an obvious way of saving money whilst still telling viewers and listeners what they need to know.

New Media changing the political landscape in America

The American primaries may well see the replacement of the old journalism by the new journalism is selecting presidential contestants.Steve Borris certainly thinks so,when I asked the question on his blog.


According to Steve

We are seeing the effects of the new journalism, and we are seeing a sharp loss of power of the old journalism, which has been concentrating power in the hands of the NY Times, Washington Post, AP, and to a lesser extent the 3 big TV networks

but

there’s a long, long way to go — that I think will happen in a surprisingly short time. We are moving from a “mass media” model where news is one-size-fits-all to a “multitude media” model where everyone will visit news outlets tailored to their interests.

These are existing times for the new media,no doubt.American political bloggers have a far greater influence over the political landscape than their counterparts over here.The results in Iowa and the latest polls from New Hampshire suggest that the political landscape is changing.

I shall be watching with great interest

Uk nationals celebrate a little early

America goes Obama mad says the Sun as the nationals take the results in Iowa as the start of a change in American politics

George Pascoe Watson writing in the same paper

COULD this be the Presidential election which changes America for good?
Barack Obama is a black man who swept to victory in a state which is 95 per cent white.
He won over huge swathes of under25s and undecided voters.
And he won the hearts of women voters – despite being up against feminist Hillary Clinton.
Obama is a 46-year-old rookie untainted by the cynical treadmill of Washington politics.

The Independent not surprisingly is over the moon at the prospect of regime change

"Change" is the oldest word in the political lexicon, but it is also the most galvanising. And suddenly it seems more than conceivable that Mr Obama, black, relatively untested and looking even younger than his 46 years, could ride it to the White House.

Its leader ,with a hint of caution ,reminding us

The clear victory for Barack Obama, in a state that was not his natural terrain either, was seized upon by some as giving the lie to the view that white voters would never support a black candidate. Gratifying though Mr Obama's victory will be to him and his burgeoning team, however, the white Democrats who constituted the Iowa caucus electorate were never likely to present his main problem. It is white Republicans he has to win over, and – while this may seem counterintuitive – the many black Americans who do not see him as one of them.

The Guardian too

Even with this year's changes, an American presidential election is still a marathon not a sprint. So start with some provisos. The winning numbers in the 2008 Iowa presidential caucuses were not overwhelming. but also telling us

do not shy away from the obvious, either. On the Democratic side, the next presidential candidate will now be either a black man or a woman - and the chances have risen that it will be Mr Obama.

The Telegraph rather philosophically says

On one continent, at least, democracy is gloriously in the ascendant. Asia is shamed by Pakistan, Africa by Kenya. In South America, three Left-wing autocrats have dissolved their parliaments. Europe, meanwhile, is traducing the whole notion of representative government by adopting the reheated constitution without the referendums that had been promised in seven EU members.
In North America, though, we have democracy at its rawest and most elemental. Primaries expose candidates to the blasting wind of public scrutiny. Try as they might to press themselves into some sheltering nook, they cannot hide their personalities from the voters.

The message that Bush should take from the mood expressed in Iowa says the Times was

expressed by voters in Iowa towards the present incumbent in the White House was not quite that brutal, but it was firm all the same. A record number of electors turned out to the Democratic caucuses, which had more than twice the participants seen at their Republican equivalents adding that

Mr Bush should not shrink into his shell. Nor should he resort to desperate populism in a probably doomed attempt to drive up his opinion poll scores. He retains immense authority. Neither the United States nor the wider world can afford for him to become a semidetached leader. As the American unemployment figures yesterday confirmed, there is the serious risk of a sharp economic slowdown in the US. Averting this will not be helped if the executive branch is regarded as ineffective. A departing president should also be looking to diminish the foreign policy problems that he hands over to a successor. Mr Bush must not be reduced to an Aunt Sally for angry and alienated voters during the primary season.

American revolution says the Mirror

The beginning of the end of George W Bush could also break the mould of American politics thanks to yesterday's triumph by Barack Obama.

The Mail too praises democracy

Can there be anything more fascinating in politics than the raw democratic process by which America chooses its president? The Iowa caucus, the first contest for presidential hopefuls, threw up some electrifying surprises yesterday.

Across the water,the La Times looks to New Hampshire

the challenge for the winners -- Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee -- is to make their political magic work with voters in other states who may be less receptive to their anti-establishment message.The risk for Obama and Huckabee is that they may suffer the fate of past insurgents who soared in early tests only to fizzle in late primaries. In 1984, Democrat Gary Hart had a surprise win in New Hampshire, but faded fast and was eventually trounced by the establishment's candidate, Walter F. Mondale.

Caution from the New York Times

It is dangerous to draw too many conclusions from the Iowa caucuses — a telegenic display of activism by a tiny slice of Americans. No winner of contested Iowa caucuses has then gone on to win the White House.

but

some powerful political currents were on display in Iowa, starting with a yearning for change and inspirational leadership among Democrats.

and in the same paper,David Brooks writes that

I’ve been through election nights that brought a political earthquake to the country. I’ve never been through an election night that brought two.

The Washington post looking at the realities

In his breathtakingly eloquent victory speech Thursday, Mr. Obama said Iowa would be remembered as "the moment when we tore down barriers that have divided us for too long, when we rallied people of all parties and ages to a common cause."
But what cause, precisely? There's virtually nothing in Mr. Obama's platform that diverges from the standard, left-wing Democratic fare. He promised again Thursday not to "just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to know." But virtually nothing he says is dissonant to liberal ears; in foreign policy, trade policy, education policy, fiscal policy, there is nothing with a nod to the possibility of good ideas in the red-state playbook.

Its commentator,E.J.Dionne Jr,writes

Iowa voters in both parties staged a rebellion against the status quo and against the past.
Mike Huckabee's decisive victory over Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses last night marks a revolution in Republican politics. An outspent outsider triumphed over a former governor who played an inside game. Huckabee's victory is also the revenge of evangelical Christians who had been taken for granted by the GOP establishment and decided to vote for one of their own, a Baptist minister turned politician.
Change, particularly generational change, was also at the heart of Barack Obama's victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards. Young voters and independents flocked to the Illinois senator. Media entrance polls showed that Obama defeated Clinton by better than 5 to 1 among voters under age 30, and such voters made up almost as large a share of the caucus electorate as voters over 65, a strongly pro-Clinton group. Among independents, Obama beat Clinton by better than 2 to 1.