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Daily Howler)
The Daily Howler is an American political blog written by Bob Somerby. It was perhaps the first major political blog, started in 1998. The style is by turns earnest and sarcastic. Somerby criticizes what he considers the media's frequently biased or lazy coverage. In his view, the media frequently latch on to a generally agreed "script" with little regard for facts that contradict the script. For instance, in the runup to the US 2000 election it was frequently said or assumed that Gore was untruthful, but Somerby claims much of what supposedly underlay that script was in fact untrue, misrepresented or greatly exaggerated. He also argues that the media frequently ignore substantive issues and concentrate on trivial ones instead (in the 2000 presidential election, for example, professing bewilderment in response to the candidates' budget proposals while writing repeatedly and at length about irrelevant issues such as Gore's choice of clothes, or in 2006 writing articles about Barack Obama's middle name.) Somerby often critiques education writing, particularly articles on scholastic achievement in low-performing elementary and high schools, analyzing what he considers to be poorly reported data and criticizing what he calls "feel-good" scripts. Despite being left of center in his politics, Somerby also critiques liberals in the U.S. mainstream media who he feels do poor journalism, like Rachel Maddow[1] and Keith Olbermann[2], both of MSNBC.
Bob Somerby is also a professional stand up comic. He has appeared on Larry King Live, with Bill Maher, Bill O'Reilly and with Brian Lamb on C-Span. In college at Harvard, he was roommates with the actor Tommy Lee Jones and former Vice President Al Gore. After college he taught for twelve years in Baltimore public elementary schools.
[edit] Citations
- ^ Somerby, Bob. TRY TELLING THE TRUTH! Maddow was emoting hard—and handing us rubes half a story. 2009-04-15. [1] acessdate = 2009-04-23
- ^ Somerby, Bob. GREETINGS FROM THE IDIOCRACY! KO’s report may have been the dumbest thing we’ve ever seen on cable. 2009-04-09. [2] accessdate = 2009-04-23
[edit] Commentary
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A message to my fellow journalists: check out media watch sites like campaigndesk.org, mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com. It's good to see ourselves as others see us. I've been finding The Daily Howler's concept of a media "script," a story line that shapes coverage, often in the teeth of the evidence, particularly helpful in understanding cable news. |
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- From a Virginian-Pilot opinion piece[5]: ...his persistent needling made something of a splash in state education circles last week. ... What he’s discovered about the way Virginia calculates school accreditation ratings ought to be far more broadly understood.
[edit] External links
