Daily Digest: Finding the Fox News Virus
BY Joshua Levy | Monday, March 17 2008
The Web on the Candidates
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Activist filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who’s been attacking Fox News for years, is now taking on a Fox News “virus” that he says has been affecting media coverage of Barack Obama. On the FOX Attacks site (a sub-site of his main Brave New Films site), his group has posted a new video illustrating how certain coverage of Obama — questioning patriotism, using his middle name — has traveled from the O’Reilly No-Spin Zone all the way to folks like Tim Russert. Note the cable news-style ticker running across the bottom; it’s actually made up of messages sent in by fans of BNF. Pretty cool. (Hat tip, Sarah Lai Stirland)
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A few months ago we blogged about the Drum Major Institute’s site TheMiddleClass.org, a project that grades Congress on its pro-middle class legislation and offers some fancy widgets to get the word out. They’ve just released their 2007 grades for middle class-friendly legislation, with 60 percent of Congress passing and 38 percent failing. But from a webby point of view, the real fun of the site lies in its superior widgetry, which reminds us of OpenCongress' widgets. You can build a widget in sixty seconds that shows the report card for any Members of Congress or piece of legislation. It looks easy but we’re sure it ain’t; in any case, other advocacy groups should take notice.
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I feel like I’ve seen this before… global TV channel LinkTV has launched a project called Dear American Voter, in which they’re asking world citizens to post videos expressing who they’d vote for in the US election, and why. Videos include the ridiculous suggestion by philosopher Slavoj Zizek that all the world — excluding the Americans — should vote for the American government. Um, great idea, Slavoj. I've got an idea: no one should elect their own leader! We all swap our votes. That way, nothing gets done.
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Some of the genius of Digg is in the number of clones it’s inspired; the latest we’ve come across is DemWire, which is basically Digg for Democratic politics. While Digg’s 2008 US Elections page suffices for many of us — and provides news from across the political spectrum — the creators of DemWire are hoping to create a community targeted explicitly at progressives and Democrats.
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Ready for something truly weird? Check out this Ron Paul promo, in which Paul’s avatar stands underwater and travels through the world and time, lecturing us on America’s proper place in the world. Then he ascends above water as the leader of a free America and savior to computer-generated citizens everywhere.
The Candidates on the Web
- Yesterday MTV’s college network mtvU hosted a meeting between Bill Clinton and college journalists from USC, Smith College, Howard University, and Tulane Hullabaloo. They’ve posted the questions and responses, which must have been quite an education for the students. The moment reintroduces Bill into a race on which many feel he's had a negative effect; does this signal a soft re-entry for Bubba?
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In chart news, Obama's continuing to soar on YouTube, but his ascension into the Facebook stratosphere has slowed somewhat. Meanwhile, blog mentions of Obama and Hillary Clinton have slowed somewhat, and John McCain is enjoying more buzz.
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A video of Obama renouncing (rejecting? denouncing?) Reverend Jeremiah Wright has been gaining traction YouTube, getting more than 50,000 views in the last day.
In Case You Missed It…
Last week Micah Sifry was at the tech conference ETech, and he was impressed by a session in which the panelists discussed how civic-minded hackers have being taking government data that ought to be in public view, and making it available to all—with transformative and beneficial effects.
Inspired by an Obama Meetup group, Zephyr Teachout went on a spontaneous voter registration drive this weekend, most of which occurred outside a dollar store.
It looks like the heightening divisions with the Democratic party over the Obama-Clinton contest are causing an open split in the online progressive city known as DailyKos, writes Micah Sifry.
One way that John McCain laps the competition online, says Patrick Ruffini, is how he uses his site to tell his story to first-time visitors and undecided voters.
In a campaign first, Obama went on Huffington Post to address the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy. Micah Sifry wonders if Barack will stay around to deal with HP’s wild-west commenters.
In their weekly column in the Politico, Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry review Clay Shirky’s fantastic new book, Here Comes Everybody. “The adage that organized minorities are more powerful than disorganized majorities is now more true than ever,” they write. “However, as these organized minorities multiply and grow, they are challenging the very nature of what power is and how it will be maintained in our society."