The presidential press corps seem to want to imitate leeches on the butts of subtropical hunters. Walter Brasch, an award-winning journalist and university professor, explains why.

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There many good reasons for Democratic superdelegates to hold off on making a decision between Senators Clinton and Obama, but the national popular vote is not one of them. Over fifty years ago Jean-Paul Sartre warned us about something he called "bad faith." We are in "bad faith" when we are free to make a decision but convince ourselves that there is something preventing us from making this decision. For example, those who seek advice can be in bad faith. They say that they cannot decide until they get some good advice, knowing in advance what the advice will be.

How does this relate to the election and the so-called popular vote? Well, if we can believe a lot of pollsters and journalists, the superdelegates really want to know what the national popular vote is going to be before they can make up their minds. Until they know, they cannot choose between Clinton and Obama. But for anyone who has seen some of the (often well intentioned) attempts to calculate the national popular vote, it should be obvious that no such total will be available. There is no evil plot afoot. The simple reality is that states have chosen very different ways to select delegates. The first great divide is between caucus states and non-caucus states......

For more, Please see http://msa4.wordpress.com/

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It's a fact: Media conglomerates' labor practices are harming the quality of TV and radio news.

A CBS television newswriter says: "We take a lot of stuff from 'Entertainment Tonight.' We watch it at 6:30 and decide what to use."

Most Americans still get their news from "old media" like newspapers, TV and radio. There's concern about how Rupert Murdoch will gut the Wall St. Journal when he gets his hands on it.  MSNBC Anchor Mika Brzezinski recently tried to burn a script on air in frustration over being asked to lead the day's news with a story about Paris Hilton rather than Richard Lugar's declaration that Bush's Iraq strategy is failing. Who can we trust to tell us what's really going on? Now, a new study of broadcast journalists from the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) gives an inside look at how the media conglomerates are destroying broadcast news quality with the same tactics other big companies are using against their workers. Replacing full-time newswriters with part-timers and temps, cutting staff and resources, and requiring more and more "multi-tasking" in the newsroom, equals bad news for the public. Literally.

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In recent days there has been an uproar in the German media about revelations that the German intelligence agency "BND" has spied on journalists in order to crack down on internal leaks.

Today, German Chancellor (and new Bush buddy) Angela Merkel has barred the BND (the German equivalent of the CIA) from recruiting journalists stating that freedom of the press outweighs the BND's interest to protect itself.

After today's new revelations in the US about the NSA tracking journalist's calls, maybe Bush can learn something from his new friend Angela.

Links and details below the fold.

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