CPAC protests AOL over Huffington Post deal

Conservatives at the CPAC conference are calling for a boycott of AOL after the company purchased the liberal website Huffington Post. A photo of the flier is here.

Juan Williams, the most important man in America today

I find it hard to get too worked up about NPR firing Juan Williams for saying he gets "nervous" when he sees Muslims on an airplane. One could certainly argue that NPR handled the situation poorly from a PR perspective; and any inconsistency in how NPR applies its policy prohibiting analysts and reporters from offering opinion is certainly newsworthy. My main takeaway: If Williams wasn't supposed to offer opinions on cable news shows, NPR should have fired him long before he stumbled into an issue that's so politically charged.

What have we learned from all of this? First, conservatives who didn't like NPR before don't like NPR even more now. Second, despite repeated claims that NPR is a taxpayer-funded operation, it really isn't. Third, getting fired by the "lamestream" media is lucrative. Last, pundits yelling the loudest about censorship aren't necessarily the most consistent on the issue. From Bloggasm:

The conservative media watchdog Newsbusters claimed today that “Juan Williams has done nothing wrong” and that “what he said echoes what the vast majority of Americans believe.” This is the complete opposite of the view it took on Nasr’s rather anodyne tweet. “CNN has finally taken a step in the right direction in removing a terrorist sympathizer from their ranks,” the blogger wrote several months ago. “It’s a shame it took this amount of publicity and attention from organizations like the MRC to get the job done, as Octavia Nasr should never have been granted the position of authority to begin with.”

Why some conservatives think journalism is liberal

Why do conservatives think journalism is, at its heart, a liberal enterprise? Aside from the fact that journalism's biggest takedown happened to be of a Republican president, the "conservative" journalism movement thinks most investigative reporters want the government to come in and solve any problems they uncover - at least according to columnist K. Daniel Glover:

Much investigative journalism has at its core a belief that government is the solution to whatever problems the investigations uncover. Conservatives who have seen how government creates more problems than it solves don't have any interest in doing work that will promote more government interference and less freedom.

Four in the morning*

1. New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin is one of the 70 or so news staffers who took a recent buyout, but he plans to continue his Dot Earth blog at the paper. CJR

2. Former Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Hymon says working for the government (he writes for the MTA) isn't any worse, and may be better, than working for a newspaper. Neon Tommy via LA Observed

3. David Carr at the New York Times writes that the Wall Street Journal's news coverage is taking a conservative turn under Rupert Murdoch's management, and the Wall Street Journal's editor in chief says the New York Times is just jealous. NYT and Poynter (*Update: Carr responds to the uproar via Twitter: Did not intend WSJ col. as purpose punch. Love WSJ, noticed political drift. Wrote what I saw. Not trying to pick fight or carry water.)

4. The new mantra for journalism is cooperation and, to that end, the New Orleans Times-Picayune has teamed up with ProPublica and Frontline to investigate questionable police shootings in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. ProPublica

Authentically disingenuous

Mike Huckabee whomped John McCain in Kansas in Saturday's Republican primary.

From the New York Times: Mr. Huckabee won 60 percent of the vote, Mr. McCain 24 percent and Representative Ron Paul of Texas 11 percent. The A.P. reported that Mr. Huckabee picked up all 36 Kansas delegates.

Is that 60 percent a protest vote? If so, McCain has a long way to go to convince voters of what the party leaders have already declared: that the conservative base will rally around the nominee no matter who he is.

The question for McCain is whether this is a last fit thrown by conservatives unhappy with but resigned to his nomination? Or a signal from the base that he better veer rightward if he wants them to back him come November?

News is biased unless done by partisans

The demise of the newspaper could be a boon for conservatives, according to the National Legal and Policy Center. And it's not even satire.

Here's the nutgraf: If conservative nonprofit organizations significantly increase their use of investigative reporting, then the movement will be able to partly offset the liberal bias of the mainstream media. Despite their political agenda, newspapers and TV networks like scandals simply because they make great headlines. Experience shows that they will cover scandals exposed by conservatives.

Here's the kicker: A critical reason for the success of the conservative movement is its ability to counter the biases of the media establishment through talk radio and the internet. Conservatives can similarly revolutionize the media by filling the void in investigative reporting caused by the decline in newspaper circulation.

I suppose this counts as a form of citizen journalism.