Opinions

Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) earlier this month came out with a survey indicating a bifurcation. NPR and the Sunday punditathons inform people; ideologically driven cable tube — chiefly Fox News and MSNBC — disinform people, or, in the words of the study, have a “negative impact on people’s current events knowledge.”

Now for the shockers.

Shocker No. 1: NPR has issued a cheery statement on the findings: “It’s great to see – our own research tells us that NPR listeners are engaged, knowledgeable of domestic and world events, and that being well informed is important to them. That’s why people tune to member stations and come to us online and on mobile – they know they’ll get fact-based reporting and analysis from journalists with deep knowledge of their beats.”

Shocker No. 2: Fox News didn’t respond to an inquiry and MSNBC no-commented it.

On Monday night, the Washington Times announced that it would conduct an inquiry into the work of longtime columnist Arnaud de Borchgrave, following allegations that he’d lifted material from other sources on the Internet. Ed Kelley, the paper’s top editor, said that the allegations about de Borchgrave’s work “require attention.”

Not to mention a bit of Internet hiding. Check out the author page for de Borchgrave on the Washington Times site. The links to recent columns by the reporter lead to dead ends: “This story is no longer available on the site.” Older pieces from de Borchgrave’s archive appear active at this writing.

A source at the paper indicates that the link deactivating took place yesterday, presumably as a part of the investigation. The story announcing the investigation, however, made no mention that the paper would be pushing the columnist’s recent oeuvre into the shadows. Kelley didn’t respond to an e-mail last night requesting an explanation.

Take your pick: 1) The digital disappearing act reflects the paper’s determination to remove from public view work that’s been called into question, the better to serve its readers; 2) the digital disappearing act reflects the paper’s determination to operate in secret and dodge public accountability.

In the segment above, MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan raises an important issue. Not the failings of our politico-financial system, mind you, but something more basic: Why invite a panel of experts on the show if all you’re going to do is gas-bag your way through the segment?

In case you missed it---Patch is trimming some managers — about 20 of them — in an effort to cut costs. Or, in Patch’s view, in an effort to restructure itself in line with something called “OTOG,” an acronym for ”One Team, One Goal.” It’s all about breaking down walls between departments and scurrying for all available stories and all available ad dollars.

Elsewhere:

*Politico’s Josh Gerstein writes about how the White House and key agencies helped Hollywooders who wanted to know all about the successful Osama bin Laden raid of May 2011.

At a briefing in July 2011, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Mike Vickers told filmmakers Michael Boal and Katherine Bigelow that the leaders of the the Special Operations Command couldn’t speak to them for appearances’ sake. However, Vickers said that the Pentagon would make available a Navy SEAL who was involved in planning the raid from its earliest stages.

Yeah! sums up how the filmmakers responded to the news. Documents on the White House’s openness on the matter were obtained by Judicial Watch. As Gerstein notes, “officials seemed aware that cooperating with Boal was in some tension with the government’s public line that it was trying to crack down on leaks.” Correct: Officialdom just couldn’t keep quiet about this event.

*Michael Wolff, showing frugal use of the comma, punctures the notion that there’s something revolutionary about Facebook’s biz model:

Facebook currently derives 82 percent of its revenue from advertising. Most of that is the desultory ticky-tacky kind that litters the right side of people’s Facebook profiles. Some is the kind of sponsorship that promises users further social relationships with companies: a kind of marketing that General Motors just announced it would no longer buy.

Facebook’s answer to its critics is: pay no attention to the carping. Sure, grunt-like advertising produces the overwhelming portion of our $4 billion in revenues; and, yes, on a per-user basis, these revenues are in pretty constant decline, but this stuff is really not what we have in mind. Just wait.

*Sean Hannity presses Colin Powell on the importance of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers in the biography of President Obama:

*Phone-hacking scandal depravity check, via the Guardian: Turns out that while Andy Coulson was editor of the News of the World, some of his voicemails to a government official were allegedly hacked. The hacking operation, it appears, didn’t discriminate against anyone.

*Peter Osnos hails ProPublica in the Atlantic, writing that the site is delivering great journalism and growing its donor base:

It needs to be said that dependence on philanthropy can be tenuous as priorities, especially among foundations, can change over time. But ProPublica has shown conclusively that it is possible to build a major news gatherer that the public will reward with donations, recognizing that the return on that support will only be in the amazing array of stories that profoundly affect how our institutions of government and private enterprise function.

Fox News chief Roger Ailes. (Helayne Seidman) In an appearance last month at the University of North Carolina, Fox News boss Roger Ailes made news with this line, among others: In “15 years we have never taken a story down because it was wrong. You can’t say that about CNN, CBS or the New York Times.”

Critics pounced with examples of Fox stories that didn’t bear out, including my favorite: The report that the Washington Monument was “tilting” in the aftermath of last August’s earthquake.

The claim of factual perfection thus looked like a prime question to place before the news chief during his appearance last night at Ohio University, where he sat down for an interview with former Washington Post ombudsman Andy Alexander at the invitation of the university’s George Washington Forum. Does Ailes really stand by the 15-year boast? Or was it just a provocative little stretch?

The query was on Alexander’s list, he says, but he didn’t get to it. “There’s been so much out there by Media Matters and others that it fell down the priority list,” says Alexander. “It wasn’t ideal for a long-form interview.”

Alexander had a different emphasis for the discussion, one that would drill deeper into Ailes as Ailes. “I wanted to deal a little bit with his personal stuff,” said Alexander, a visiting professional at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. “Why is he so paranoid — and he didn’t dispute that he was paranoid.” On this matter, says Alexander, Ailes professed that he lives in a “tough world” and that there are “lots of threats against him.”