– Rachel Maddow and Politifact engage in giant slapfight:
On her Dec. 20 show, Maddow said, “Today, the self-proclaimed but quickly becoming irrelevant Web site PolitiFact declared the idea that Republicans voted to end Medicare their lie of the year for 2011. That comes after lots of lobbying by Paul Ryan for that to be declared a lie.”
On Jan. 25, Maddow was mad that PolitiFact had initially rated “half true”—later changed to “mostly true”—a claim that President Obama had made about job creation in his State of the Union address. Maddow argued the claims were simply true: “PolitiFact, you are fired. You are a mess. You are fired. You are undermining the definition of the word ‘fact’ in the English language by pretending to it in your name. The English language wants its word back. You are an embarrassment. You sully the reputation of anyone who cites you as an authority on fact-ishness, let alone fact. You are fired.”
Politifact debunks Maddow and as is progressives’s nature, they eat their own. Pass the popcorn on this one.
– I’m not sure that ANY of these photos fall under the “sexpot look.” But apparently, liberal women want to nag about something these days, so even through the economy is in the honey pot, let’s have a giant hissing match over how women look in their Twitter photos. Can we next debate about hemlines? OH MY GOSH.
– Funny: NPR introduces new ethics handbook:
Today, NPR is introducing staffers to a new Ethics Handbook that has been in the works for more than a year and illustrates how the organization is taking steps to safeguard against some of the ethical dilemmas it’s faced in the past.
NPR began working on the 72-page handbook shortly after Ellen Weiss, vice president of news, fired news analyst Juan Williams for remarks he made about Muslims on “The O’Reilly Factor.” The October 2010 dismissal led NPR’s Board of Directors to conduct a formal review of what happened. A couple months after the incident, which generated widespread criticism, Weiss resigned.
– Asian American Journalists release guidelines on Jeremy Lin coverage. The ESPN headline was stupid, but are special guidelines for common sense really necessary? Are people that stupid? AAJA says yes:
Among the “danger zones” identified by AAJA:
“CHINK”: Pejorative; do not use in a context involving an Asian person on someone who is Asian American. Extreme care is needed if using the well-trod phrase “chink in the armor”; be mindful that the context does not involve Asia, Asians or Asian Americans.
And:
“ME LOVE YOU LIN TIME”: Avoid. This is a lazy pun on the athlete’s name and alludes to the broken English of a Hollywood caricature from the 1980s.
– Demonstration of the average intelligence of an MSNBC viewer.
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