Media Musings, Take 3

Remember way back in the '80s when Al Gore was a level-headed centrist? Since then, the ex-Veep has gone through more transformations than Michael Jackson's nose: Al the Automatron, Al the Woodsy Environmentalist, Al the Wild-Eyed Pirate and now Al the TV Hipster Doofus.

That's right. Our own Al Gore is now busy at work on INdTV, a $70 million TV cable network he and his fellow investors have purchased and are crafting for the nation's young and cool.

Currently the network is wading through potential programming. While some of it actually sounds watchable in a junky VH1 "I Love the '80s" sort of way, we're a little bemused that such TV morsels would come under the banner of a former vice president of the United States.

The Washington Post gives us a rundown of some of the slated shows (and this is no joke) in INdTV's own words:

"That's F*&#ed Up: Is there something unfathomable going on around the corner or down the street? Some state of affairs that just doesn't make sense? You can rant all you want -- it just better be good TV.

"INdTV Paparazzi: Get someone famous to opine on something substantive. ('Hey Paris -- what did you think of Rumsfeld's quote on the armored Humvee shortage in Iraq?') Or, ask a serious figure about something not-so-substantive. Note: Don't be a stalker.

"Addicted: What's your addiction? Food? A fetish? A relationship? Do you lead a double life? This is first-person: time to confess.

"INdTV Is The New Black: Are you a trend-spotter? A cool-hunter? Take off your trucker cap (or put it back on) and show us the next big thing in clothes, culture, style or slang."

Hmm. The man who donned earth tones and gave us the phrase "lockbox" is going to explore the latest in style and slang.

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OK, I'm as sick and tired of the whole CBS memo scandal as anyone else (with a few exceptions, of course), but regardless, I call to your attention a worthwhile, if exhaustive, Columbia Journalism Review postmortem on the controversy.

The CJR ponders how fairly the blogosphere handled questions of authenticity surrounding the memos, which former Texas Guardsman Bill Burkett claimed had been written by Lt. Col. Jerry Killiam. Now deceased, Killiam had supervised President Bush in the Texas National Guard.

It reads:

"Who really wrote them? Theories abound: The Kerry campaign created the documents. CBS’s source forged them. Karl Rove planted them. They were real. Some of them were real. They were recreations of real documents. The bottom line, which credible document examiners concede, is that copies cannot be authenticated either way with absolute certainty. The memos that were circulated online were digitized, scanned, faxed, and copied who knows how many times from an unknown original source. We know less about this story than we think we do, and less than we printed, broadcast, and posted.

"Ultimately, we don’t know enough to justify the conventional wisdom: that the documents were “apparently bogus” (as Howard Kurtz put it, reporting on Dan Rather’s resignation) and that a major news network was an accomplice to political slander.

"What efforts did CBS make to track down the original source? What warnings did CBS’s own experts provide to '60 Minutes II' before air time? ... Meanwhile, the dangerous impatience in the way the rest of the press handled this journalistic tale bears examination, too."

While I have no doubt the left-leaning CJR has its own ideological bias, the magazine raises a number of legitimate concerns about how the anti-Rather bloggers, smelling blood, might have twisted out of control. Again, CJR surely isn't the definitive source on the matter, but it's worth a read.

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Hey, here's a new -- and welcome -- development. It seems that a business has actually pulled its advertising from TV stations that demonstrate a right-wing bias. The world's biggest office-product supplier, Staples, is giving the cold shoulder to Sinclair-owned local TV stations.

From the Washington Post: "'Staples does not disclose the decision-making or specifics of its media-buying activity,' [Staples spokesman Owen] Davis said. 'With that said, Staples did consider among other factors the concerns expressed by our customers' regarding the content on Sinclair news programs, Davis said."

Good job, Staples. So, it isn't just nipples, hyper-realistic World War II movies and "Desperate Housewives" promotional spots that spur people into action. Who knew?