Cox & Forkum – exit, stage right.

Like the man says, all good things must come to an end. Like this man says, that’s true but it still sucks.

Cartoonists Cox & Forkum are hanging it up, at least for the most part. See their final bow here and have a browse around at some truly wonderful talent. Gentlemen, we’ll miss you…

Media Matters situation and D. Mindich’s “Tuned Out” – the real reason for disconnect?

I just finished David Mindich’s 2005 book “Tuned Out“, the work that delves into the reasons why younger folks don’t watch the news or read newspapers any more, why that’s a danger to a democracy such as ours, and what to do about it. Mindich is a former CNN editor and I wish his stances in the book weren’t so accurately projected based on that 1 fact, but they generally are.

As I said, one of the primary subjects in the book is the matter of why young Americans are tuning out of the news. He brought up a number of reasons, most of which I agree with. The one that he gave the barest of mentions to, however, was the notion that the media is viewed as untrustworthy as regards conveying the news. This, I believe, is the real cause of the tune-out overall. It just happens to be that younger Americans have many more reasons than that, so the disconnect is more advanced. Mindich touched on it, yes, but only in throwing a few stones at CNN’s chief rival, Fox News. He brings up a study that purported to show that Fox News viewers were far more likely to believe that Saddam Hussein had a direct hand in the 9/11 attacks and, that view being dead wrong, he castigated Fox over their news reporting.

Given the Rathergate forged documents debacle, the TNR-Beauchamp fiction stories, and now the Media Matters fact-twisting that was dutifully carried by the likes of CNN themselves, I’d like to know if Mindich would like to amend his target list. He’s right about this, in general – the more news agencies skew their reporting to match their selected narrative the more people will see them as worse than irrelevant and the more they’ll look elsewhere for the news.

US Missile Defense system tests OK

Interesting.

An intercontinental ballistic missile interceptor blasted out of an underground silo at Vandenberg Air Force Base shortly after 1:15 p.m., and tracked a target missile that had lifted off from the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska, the Boeing Co. said in a statement.

The Missile Defense Agency said initial results show the interceptor’s rocket motor system and kill vehicle performed as planned. Boeing said the warhead was tracked, intercepted and destroyed.

Duke’s President finally apologies regarding the non-rape case

Duke’s President Richard Brodhead finally got around to apologizing for the abysmal performance of his offices in the non-rape case targeting the men’s lacrosse players.

Brodhead, speaking at the university’s law school, said he regretted Duke’s “failure to reach out” in a “time of extraordinary peril” after a woman accused three players of raping at a March 2006 party thrown by the team.

“Given the complexities of this case, getting the communication right would never have been easy,” Brodhead said. “But the fact is that we did not get it right, causing the families to feel abandoned when they were most in need of support. This was a mistake. I take responsibility for it and I apologize for it.”

I think the families felt abandoned because the news media was trumpeting all comments coming out of Mike Nifong’s office about how their sons were guilty as sin and the only unified message coming out of Duke’s employee base was the letter from a few score of Duke’s professors joining in the condemnation. Sure, this was a complicated situation but getting the message right would have been as simple as issuing a press release immediately on the heels of that full-page ad these professors took out saying that they were being – in the opinion of the University’s official spokespeople – premature. The release could have said that and that these men were considered by the University as innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

Then there was that whole firing of the coach and canceling the lacrosse season. What message was supposed to be taken away from that by the families except that the University was abandoning them?

I’m glad the president is going on record that they screwed up but the right course of action was pretty obvious to anyone looking at it objectively and the University should have simply stated that it was waiting for the facts of the investigation while chiding anyone at Duke who wasn’t.