Online Media

Earlier this evening, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism issued its report on Rolling Stone Magazine's November "A Rape on Campus" story. The report follows up on the magazine's request of Columbia to conduct an independent review of how the disastrously false 9,000-word story made it through to publication. USA Today is reporting that for all the harsh criticism the piece's…

UPDATE, April 6: An email sent by "Virginia Commonwealth University News" insists, despite the November 2014 tweet originally found at the link about Bryan's "GoFundMe" effort, that Alix Bryan "has not been employed by Virginia Commonwealth University." Accordingly, the text in this post's final sentence now refers to Bryan's claim in her WTVR bio and at her LinkedIn profile to have received a "…

Update, April 3: The Indiana man who claims to have been hacked now admits that he wasn't, but says he was "joking" about robbing Memories Pizza, and is threatening to sue those who exposed his (ahem) public comments.  Those of us following the Memories Pizza story won't have trouble remembering it as the years go by, thanks only partially to the Walkerton, Indiana store's fairly unusual name…

Liberal constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe may be one of the men who inspired President Obama politically, but he strongly disagrees with his power grab regarding EPA regulation now, and so all bets are off as far as the Daily Beast's Eleanor Clift is concerned.

Larry Wilmore and Trevor Noah are first-rate comedians, but beyond that, argues Klein, Comedy Central’s choice of two black hosts to succeed Stephen Colbert and (eventually) Jon Stewart was an extremely smart business move. Noah and Wilmore have a “particular skill for limning America's complicated, and often infuriating, racial politics,” writes Klein, “and their takeover is a recognition of…

Something hasn't seemed right about the Memories Pizza story from the get-go. Now I know why. In a Tuesday report, TV Station ABC 57 cited the Walkerton, Indiana business's Crystal O'Connor as saying that, in the station's words, they "don't agree with gay marriages and wouldn't cater them if asked to." In other words, they've never been asked to. The non-story which ignited a national firestorm…

On March 18, Associated Press Religion Writer Rachel Zoll covered the decision by the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) "recognizing gay marriage as Christian in the church constitution after decades of debate over same-sex relationships." A search at the AP's national site indicates that the wire service hasn't done a story on the U.S. congregation since then. This means that it has ignored a…

The press won't roast New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for this, but it should — at a very high temperature. Today, Mr. Self-Righteous, who in the past has suggested that anyone who is pro-life, against same-sex marriage, or for the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment as written and adjudicated should leave his state, banned all "non-essential" state travel to Indiana, home of a recently enacted…

So Harry Reid knew he was lying about Mitt Romney not paying taxes for ten years when he made the claim in 2012 from the lawsuit-free zone known as the floor of the U.S. Senate, but didn't care. That's what one must conclude from Reid's response to CNN's Dana Bash about that statement. Asked on the network's New Day program if he regrets what he said, Reid responded: "Romney didn't win, did he…

Bush Derangement Syndrome is alive, well, and living in the head of Nancy A. Youssef at the Daily Beast. In a March 26 item tagged "Fallen Hero" (?!) about the Army charging Bowe Bergdahl with "desertion and misbehaving before the enemy," the web site's Senior National Security Correspondent wrote that "the administration celebrated negotiating his release after years of failed bids by both the…

On Sunday on CNN's State of the Union, Dana Bash, while interviewing Texas Senator and GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz, attempted to compare his alleged lack of experience to that of Barack Obama when he declared his candidacy in 2007. It did not go well for her. It's a mystery why Bash might have thought that Cruz wouldn't have an answer for her faux concerns, but he did, and he hit her…

UPDATE, March 31: This morning in an email, the AP's Lederman pointed me to a Saturday afternoon "Big Story" item time-stamped the day before the report to which this blog post below links. For whatever reason, that earlier "Big Story" item has more detail than what appears, despite the Sunday time stamp, to be Lederman's original report posted at the AP's national site. In that "Big Story" item…

Former Red Eye co-host Bill Schulz has a piece today at The Daily Beast where he jokingly (?) compares the Tea Party political movement to the Scientology cult.

At the Washington Post on March 18, fact-checker Glenn Kessler gave Secretary of State John Kerry "four Pinocchios" for his resume-puffing "whopper" that he helped organize "the first hearings in the Senate" on global warming in 1988. In the process, Kessler inadvertently perpetuated a related myth and got called out for it. He admirably corrected himself this morning. Additionally, while…