Brian Williams wuz robbed!:

. . . Mark Halperin claimed that the "old media" -- broadcast news outlets and major newspapers -- were "biased against conservatives; there's no doubt about it." He stated, "I think we've got a chance in these last two weeks [before the then-upcoming midterm elections] to prove to conservatives that we understand their grievances. We're going to try to do better." But if "try[ing] to do better" to not appear "biased against conservatives" meant offering viewers conservative misinformation, Halperin shouldn't have worried; a review of dozens of items by Media Matters for America identifying and correcting conservative misinformation from ABC suggests that Halperin's network was "try[ing] to do better" throughout 2006. . . . These examples, and many more, earned ABC the distinction of being named Media Matters' Misinformer of the Year for 2006.

I'm sure Williams will be in the running for 2007.

I was going to write about the most inappropriate criticism of Time Magazine's choice of Person of the Year but Jamison Foser does the job:

[P]erhaps the weightiest complaint came from NBC's Brian Williams, who suggested in an essay in Time that the democratization of the media comes at great "cost to our democracy":

The problem is that there's a lot of information out there that citizens in an informed democracy need to know in our complicated world with U.S. troops on the ground along two major fronts. Millions of Americans have come to regard the act of reading a daily newspaper -- on paper -- as something akin to being dragged by their parents to Colonial Williamsburg. It's a tactile visit to another time ... flat, one-dimensional, unexciting, emitting a slight whiff of decay. It doesn't refresh. It offers no choice. Hell, it doesn't even move. Worse yet: nowhere does it greet us by name. It's for everyone.

Does it endanger what passes for the national conversation if we're all talking at once? What if "talking" means typing on a laptop, but the audience is too distracted to pay attention? The whole notion of "media" is now much more democratic, but what will the effect be on democracy?

The danger just might be that we miss the next great book or the next great idea, or that we fail to meet the next great challenge ... because we are too busy celebrating ourselves and listening to the same tune we already know by heart.

. . . "We're chosing cat videos over well-thought-out, well-reported evening newscasts," Williams sniffs. Which well-thought-out evening newscasts are those, exactly?

Brian Williams argues against Time's choice by pointing to the Media? Unfreakingbelievable.

And to top it all, while the Media generally has stunk to high holy heaven, Brian Williams is among the most notably awful journalist of the bunch. And anyone who has known his work, including his horrible work on local news in New York, can only shake their head and laugh at him. Indeed, it is a sign of how clueless he is that he dares to speak of "well thought out evening newscasts." I have no idea if Williams is biased, I do know he is not well informed, and not good at his job. That he criticizes Time's choice in the way he does is truly jawdropping.

Kudos to Murray Waas for writing this brave article at HuffPo.

Shame on the Washington City Paper, which I vow never to read, and on Murray's former research assistant.

I am never suprised to see ignorant, debased statements about alleged criminals, but cancer survivors? This is a new low.

Murray ends his article with these heartfelt comments:

From Media Matters:

A December 19 report on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight featured the graphic "Do-Nothing Dems?" But, as the report noted, Democrats will not actually assume control of Congress for a little over two weeks. . . . But rather than showing a clip of a Democrat presumably affirming Sylvester's lead-in, CNN cut to Rep. Tom Price (R-GA).

CNN also demonstrated their conservative bias, at least if you believe this "academic" I discussed, since they only cited the conservative "think" tank the Heritage Foundation.

The stupidity of the Media seems boundless.

Donald Trump believes in second chances. He's not going to fire Miss USA Tara Conner for underage drinking. Instead, she's going to rehab and will retain her title.

Ms. Connor turned 21 a few days ago.

Maybe it's time to lower the drinking age to 18. That's what it was in New York when I was that age.

If you're old enough to sign a contract, get married and die in a foreign war, you should be old enough to have a drink.

I criticized Survivor: Cook Islands a few months ago when it was announced the teams would be segregated by race.

Since Desperate Housewives was a repeat last night, I watched the two hour finale and was surprised how into it I got. (I even bought a coconut to eat, story of how abysmal that turned out here.) The four finalists were all minorities. It was a great show.

After Yul won (I would have picked Ozzy)all the contestants were brought out and there was a discussion of the racial division theme. Almost all said they played the game based on loyalty to individual members they bonded with, rather than on their ethnic backgrounds.

Yul is a Stanford and Harvard law graduate who once worked as a legislative aide to Sen. Joe Lieberman. Ozzy is a 25 year old waiter and surfer.

So, back to the original question, was Survivor's initial race-division theme terrible?

I was surprised last week to learn uber-publisher Judith Regan had been fired from Harper Collins over the O.J. book fiasco. She brought a ton of money into the company with her (in my view trashy) books. Now it makes more sense:

Rupert Murdoch personally ordered the dismissal of Judith Regan, the publisher of a widely criticized O. J. Simpson book, after he heard reports of a heated conversation Ms. Regan had with a company lawyer on Friday that included comments that were deemed anti-Semitic, according to two people familiar with the News Corporation’s account of the firing.

Mark Jackson, a lawyer with HarperCollins, a division of the News Corporation that includes Ms. Regan’s imprint, reported the alleged comments from a phone conversation with Ms. Regan....

....Mr. Murdoch... authorized [Jane Friedman, HarperCollins’s president and chief executive] to dismiss her, saying her slurs were the final straw after other recent episodes of what were deemed improper behavior, according to one of the people familiar with the News Corporation’s account.

Nobody got named person of the year by Time because they named everybody.

The annual honor for 2006 went to each and every one of us, as Time cited the shift from institutions to individuals citizens of the new digital democracy, as the magazine put it. The winners this year were anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web.

"If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people," said Richard Stengel, who took over as Time's managing editor earlier this year. "But if you choose millions of people, you don't have to justify it to anyone."

It's really not us, of course, it's the web. But I guess saying it's us personalizes it a bit.

Now I have heard everything:

Matt Drudge, who may or may not be a willing accomplice to the distortion of news reporting, must be held responsible for the dissemination of the bias in the liberal press. . . . A study of press bias by a professor of political science at the University of California-Los Angeles, Tim Groseclose, listed the Drudge Report as one of the most liberal sites on the Web because it consistently posts articles from left-of-center sources.

My patience with the Drudge Report ended when I saw a photo of Frank Rich of the Times posted on the site along with his words: "We are losing in Iraq." It isn't too encouraging to the morale of the nation, but posts like this are common on Drudge.

The site gives top billing to every possible negative statement about the Iraq war and the Bush administration, and it gets about 13 million hits a day. Is it any wonder that President Bush has record low approval ratings?

Wow. Just wow.

h/t Jason Zengerle and Josh Marshall.

The 2007 Golden Globe nominations were announced this morning.

I haven't seen Babel or several of the films, but I did like Martin Scorcese's The Departed a lot and am glad to see Leonardo DiCaprio get a best actor's nod for it. How strange that he's running against himself -- he's also up for the best actor award for Blood Diamond, another film I am anxiously awaiting.

The Departed's nomination for best picture seems like a stretch though -- and I would have liked am glad to see Jack Nicholson get a nomination for it.

As for the tv nominations, I hope Grey's Anatomy wins them all. I am seriously addicted to the show and every one of its characters.

Actor Peter Boyle has died at age 71.

I will remember him most for the 1970 movie Joe, in which he plays an Archie Bunker type workingman who hates the counterculture.

It was Susan Sarandon's first movie role.

RIP Mr. Boyle.

Buy The Ticket, Take the Ride....tonight at 10pm ET on the Starz channel.

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." These are the immortal words from Hunter Stockton Thompson, a.k.a. Doctor Gonzo and Raoul Duke. Principal photography is nearing completion on Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film, Starz Entertainment’s insightful look at the man whose last wish was to have his ashes blown out of a giant cannon. The special is set to air on Starz, December 12 at 10:00 p.m. (et/pt).

Interviewees Include Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Bill Murray, John Cusack, Benicio Del Toro, Tom Wolfe, George McGovern, Ed Bradley, William F. Buckley and Many Others

Narrated By Nick Nolte
December 12 at 10:00 p.m. on STARZ

You Tube video clips here.