Mario Piperni dot Com

Jon Stewart demonstrates his genius once more.
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Paul Krugman on Fox’s Roger Ailes mission of misinformation…he is bang on here with his assessment of why support for health care reform went south.
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If you missed ABC’s This Week, you might want to catch the Roundtable segment. It is noteworthy because in attendance was Fox News CEO of Propaganda Roger Ailes.

My favorite part.

AILES: FOX News is fair and balanced. We had Geraldine Ferraro on for 10 years as the only woman the Democrats ever nominated. Now we have the only woman that the Republicans nominated. I’m not in politics, I’m in ratings. We’re winning.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Roger, you clearly are in ratings, but if you are in ratings, can you explain to me why FOX went away from the meeting the president was having in — why did you go away, 20 minutes before the end?

AILES: Because we’re the most trusted name in news.

Do you ever get the feeling that a lot of this stuff is made up by a team of comedy writers from the Daily Show?

You can catch the full segment here.

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Here’s how it’s done.

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(Hat Tip: DailyDish)

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Jon Stewart has had some hilarious segments where he’s torn into the likes of Bush, Palin, teabaggers and conservative hypocrisy.  And yes, he has had his moments where he’s lashed out at liberals in his wittingly comedic fashion.  This is one of them. He takes on Keith Olbermann and aside from it being wonderfully funny, it is interesting to note Olbermann’s response to Stewarts’s criticism.
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Stewart is dead on here and Olbermann’s response in admitting guilt is exactly what you’d want to hear from someone who wishes to be respected and taken seriously. It’s not anything you’d ever expect to see from a Beck or O’Reilly.
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Here’s a brilliant idea on how to fix the Sunday morning talk shows.

I think the situation calls for cynicism. But I have to admit that is not much of a call. So instead I propose this modest little fix, first floated on Twitter in a post I sent out to Betsy Fischer, Executive Producer of Meet the Press, who never replies to anything I say. “Sadly, you’re a one-way medium,” I said to Fischer, “but here’s an idea for ya: Fact check what your guests say on Sunday and run it online Wednesday.”

Now I don’t contend this would solve the problem of the Sunday shows, which is structural. But it might change the dynamic a little bit. Whoever was bullshitting us more could expect to hear about it from Meet the Press staff on Wednesday. The midweek fact check (in the spirit of Politifact.com, which could even be hired for the job…) might, over time, exert some influence on the speakers on Sunday. At the very least, it would guide the producers in their decisions about whom to invite back.

Anyone who has sat though any of the Sunday morning talks shows knows only too well the feeling of frustration from watching politicians get away with nonsense as they spew their often baseless and endless stream of talking points. The format lends itself to BS because instantaneous fact-checking by wussy moderators is not about to happen. Or can it?

Naked assertions from politicians are the stuff of these shows. Why can’t some of them be checked in real time? Surely it’s possible to have a small army of fact-checkers at the ready during the broadcasts of these shows. Network news divisions already employ reporters and researchers (all of whom are likely passively watching their network’s program anyway) who can be deployed to assist the overall journalistic enterprise. Moreover, I’m reliably informed that technology now allows for people to send “instant messages” to one another. Why not use it? Why not open up these lines of communication between the backroom and the moderator, and bring the full force of a news gathering organization to bear as the cameras roll live?

At the very least, the producers of these shows should be capable of calling out anything that doesn’t pass the “Look What You Can Find On Google Within Thirty Seconds” Test.

And as John Cole notes…

And for us, it is a win/win. If people lie or make things up, there will be a publicized forum for correcting them. And once the guests start to realize they are going to be fact-checked, folks like President McCain might not be on every Sunday spewing bullshit.

I’m loving this idea the more I think about it. If there’s a way to make politicians and pundits more accountable for the words they speak, the spread of misinformation could be curtailed to some degree.  And to top it off, it would make for great and informative teevee.

Do it guys.

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The print media is hanging on for dear life as newspapers and weeklies shut their doors unable to deal with the easy access most have to online news.  Here is a smart and zippy fightback.
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You know it’s just a matter of time before they cart Beck away to the funny house.
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Late night so forgive me for any erratic writing today. Two and a half hours sleep and the caffeine hasn’t yet kicked in.

Another cool ad.
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All good things eventually come to an end…

This afternoon, Tim Bennett, president of Winfrey’s Harpo production house, announced that the media mogul will step off the “Oprah” set in September 2011. He said Winfrey will confirm the news on Friday’s edition of her show.

Oprah has always been a class act.

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