By Joe Weisenthal, Business Insider

It is an odd, and we’d say regrettable, pattern of this White House that it lets itself get dragged down into fights with specific media outlets.

George W. Bush experienced acrimony with the New York Times, but for the most part, other than general frustrations of a conservative administration, complaining about a liberal media, it was no big deal.

But in addition to Fox News, now The White House is going after highly-respected and influential car site Edmunds.com.

They’re actually using The White House blog to dispute the site’s analysis of Cash-For-Clunkers (via Detroit News).

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The Fox News Channel is viewed by Americans in more ideological terms than other television news networks. And while the public is evenly divided in its view of hosts of cable news programs having strong political opinions, more Fox News viewers see this as a good thing than as a bad thing.

Nearly half of Americans (47%) say they think of Fox News as “mostly conservative,” 14% say it is “mostly liberal,” and 24% say it is “neither in particular.”

Opinion about the ideological orientation of other TV news outlets is more mixed: while many view CNN and the three broadcast networks as mostly liberal, about the same percentages say they are neither in particular. However, somewhat more say MSNBC is mostly liberal than say it is neither in particular, by 36% to 27%.

The perceptions of those who regularly tune into these news networks are similar to those of the public. Nearly half (48%) of regular Fox viewers say the network is mostly conservative. About four-in-ten (41%) regular viewers of CNN describe the network as mostly liberal and 36% of regular MSNBC viewers say the same about that network.

Read More: Pew Research

Photo Credit: ario_ Creative Commons

The White House released November’s intown pool schedule for media outlets that cover the president this morning, and for the first time, Talking Points Memo is on the list.

It’s the latest in a series of moves that TPM’s made over the past few months in growing as a news organization covering the administration, albeit from a liberal perspective. This move follows hiring Christina Bellantoni, who covered the White House for the Washington Times, and recently opening and staffing a DC bureau.

When I spoke with Josh Marshall in May, I was trying to figure out how a site that thrived off combating Republicans during the Bush years would grow with Democrats in power. At that time, the TPM lacked even one full-time staffer in Washington. But now, the site is clearly establishing a presence in the capital.

Read More: By Michael Calderone, Politico

Ann McElhinney was not always a conservative; in fact, she was once quite liberal.

McElhinney was a journalist called to cover a story about a Canadian mining company in Romania. “What was really bizarre about this,” McElhinney said, “was that the BBC, CNN, the New York Times covered this story of this evil mining company; evil Canadians were going to destroy Transylvania and bring nothing but bad things, and two heroic, wonderful women-two environmentalists…were single-handedly defending the rights of the natives who were unable to speak for themselves…who were basically too stupid to understand this awful thing that was going to happen to them.”

McElhinney described her feelings upon finding out that the Canadian mining company had saved the Transylvanians working for it. That experience, she said, changed her life. She used to think that environmentalism was cute, but it “ain’t so cute anymore,” she said. “Big environment is getting away with murder.”

The murder McElhinney referred to was that of the hundreds of Africans that die every day as a result of America’s ban on DDT. Rachel Carson, the original environmentalist, made her mark on the world by getting the substance banned; DDT is the single most effective pesticide for Anopheles mosquitos, the main carriers of malaria in Africa, and it has no side effects whatsoever for humans or other mammals. The effects of DDT on birds have been greatly exaggerated as well, as McElhinney noted.

Because DDT was banned, today over 370 children die daily of malaria in Uganda alone. “This is one hundred percent unnecessary death,” McElhinney argued.

Read More: BY ALLIE WINEGAR DUZETT, Accuracy in Media

Napoleon once said he feared three newspapers more than a thousand bayonets. I fear them too, but for different reasons. News organizations flirting with bankruptcy and courting government bailouts present a troubling dilemma.

If it is true, as Napoleon said, that leaders are dealers in hope, then one could say that Obama has taken the idiom and run with it. Certainly Napoleon would have jumped at the chance to put a few newspapers at his disposal — what politician wouldn’t? Although Senator Cardin’s Newspaper Revitalization Act has good intentions, so does that road to hell we’ve heard so much about.

One must qualify as a newspaper corporation in order to receive this special government intervention. The most disturbing requirements are as follows: “(2) the newspaper published by such corporation or organization contains local, national, and international news stories of interest to the general public and the distribution of such newspaper is necessary or valuable in achieving an educational purpose, and (3) the preparation of the material contained in such newspaper follows methods generally accepted as educational in character.”

I am a fan of Overheard in the Newsroom on Facebook. One of the quotes I received recently is very telling of the times in which we find ourselves.

Overheard in the Newsroom #1936: Publisher: “You all need to be change agents. You need to get on the change train.” Reporter: “I feel like I’m on the change Titanic.” A photo journalist encapsulated many journalistic concerns with his comment, “Also, I thought our job was to REPORT the news, not be activists for change. No wonder our profession is dying.”

Read More: By Leslie Lorentzen, American Thinker

Photo Credit: ario_ Creative Commons