Be INFORMED

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

FDA Controlling Tobacco,WaPo-ABC News Poll, WaPo's Love For Right-Wing Blogs

   Around the water cooler today, we have these stories.

Huffington Post

KEVIN FREKING  |  AP  |  February 27, 2007

The FDA couldn't ban nicotine outright, but the legislation would give it the power to reduce nicotine levels, as well as require larger and more informative health warnings.

The legislation would also prohibit terms such as "light," "mild" and "low-tar," which officials say can mislead consumers into believing that certain cigarettes are safer than others.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee was to take up the legislation Tuesday.

Washington Post

By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

With Congress preparing for renewed debate over President Bush's Iraq policies, a majority of Americans now support setting a deadline for withdrawing U.S. forces from the war-torn nation and support putting new conditions on the military that could limit the number of personnel available for duty there, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Opposition to Bush's plan to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq remained strong. Two in three Americans registered their disapproval, with 56 percent saying they strongly object. The House recently passed a nonbinding resolution opposing the new deployments, but Republicans have blocked consideration of such a measure in the Senate.

Media Matters

Mon, Feb 26, 2007

The Washington Post's crush on right-wing blogger's

by Eric Boehlert

Under normal circumstances, the recent lunch at at a Filipino cafe in Washington, D.C., between Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz and right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin would have been an awkward affair. Kurtz was there to profile Malkin for the paper's Style section, yet Malkin in her writings had made it clear she despises the mainstream media and holds the Post in contempt. ("Washington Post Sinks To A New Low," read a Malkin blog entry on July 22, 2005.) She has written that the paper's managing editor displays an "anti-American mindset" and has specifically singled Kurtz out for being a dishonest and incompetent reporter.

Talk about tension. The lunch and the subsequent feature could have set off some real fireworks with Kurtz not only defending his work and the Post's reputation, but pressing Malkin hard to explain her wild and often fact-free allegations against journalists. Instead, the profile, which skated over Malkin's anti-media rants as well as her loathing of the Post, was published as a Valentine's Day week mash note, presenting Malkin as a pugnacious, on-the-rise pundit who has her liberal critics up in arms.

As Paul McLeary noted at CJR Daily: "It really takes a talented writer to paint conservative commentator Michelle Malkin as the voice of reason. ... But the Washington Post's Howie Kurtz ... manages to do just that."

Even Malkin's fellow GOP bloggers were cooing over the Post's treatment. The profile was "reasonably balanced and well worth reading," wrote Power Line. Trust me, that's an extraordinary compliment coming from bloggers whose hatred for journalists, and journalism, know no bounds.

 

 

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