FAIR sounds a bit fed up in asking us to demand more media coverage of single-payer health care -- but who can blame them? Single-payer polls well with everyone but big corporations, who the media obviously consider their real constituency. And they wonder why they get no respect. Wow, this paragraph is starting to read like "'Thieves in the Temple''s Greatest Hits." Now, the media has started to mention single-payer a little more, and Congress has included more single-payer advocates in their hearings. But that could be the Big Liars throwing us a bone. We deserve better.
Consumers Union also helps you oppose "exclusive" contracts for cell phones. We'd be a lot better off if we could choose our own phone service and choose our own phone, rather than get stuck with whatever applications our service provider wants us to have. Stunningly, Consumers Union reports that four out of five cell phone users in Asia get to choose their own providers when they get a phone. Plus they have their pick of over a thousand different cell phones, when Nokia can't even get a wi-fi phone into the U.S. because the big telecoms don't like it. It's like these big telecoms think "the free market" should only serve them. I'm so old-fashioned I think "the free market" should only serve the consumer.
Meanwhile, Media Matters provides an instructive overview of Howard Kurtz's generally lame media criticism. In fact, I think their overview instructs even more than they intend -- by which I mean it instructs us, as folks who would critique the critics. Mr. Kurtz shows quite an impressive ability to use the questioner's words against them. One questioner, asking about Mr. Kurtz's Joe Scarborough-sized blind spot when he writes about MSNBC's "liberal hosts," asks, "why do you keep pretending Joe Scarborough's three hours a day don't exist?" I feel the questioner's frustration, but Mr. Kurtz uses it against him/her: "My pretense hasn't been very consistent, since I've written lengthy pieces on both Joe and Mika." The lesson we should learn from this article isn't so much that Mr. Kurtz isn't a very good media critic, though he's not -- the lesson we should learn is that we should be more verbally precise in our interrogation of folks like Mr. Kurtz. Maybe, then, he'll get frustrated for once.
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