In the meantime, add American chauvinism to a list of grievances that include time delayed broadcasting, pathetic Internet coverage, and the idiotic decision to put last night’s USA vs. Canada hockey game on MSNBC instead of NBC. And now this, dare we say scathing, piece from the NYT‘s Alessandra Stanley:

At a time when American athletes are amassing record numbers of medals, and NBC is drawing an impressive number of viewers, sports fans couldn’t ask for more fulsome, pro-American coverage — they could ask for a little less. NBC anchors, including those paid by the news division, glom onto the glamour and reflected glory of winsome champions, as per Matt Lauer’s no-boundaries embrace of the skier Lindsey Vonn on “Today” after she won the downhill race. He draped a chocolate gold medal around her neck, gave her flowers (“just because we adore you”) and hugged her tight (“we are so proud of you”) — as if he and Meredith Vieira had spent the last 15 years rising at dawn to drive her to training.

All nations give special, fawning attention to their own teams. But NBC commentators seem so wedded to script — and prepackaged gauzy biographies — that they act as if any deviance from the party-hearty line will somehow appear unpatriotic.

And this, which I think actually gets to the heart of the problem.

NBC has been so intent on fellowship and the thrill of victory that it has neglected the thrill of an agonizing defeat, namely Russia’s. NBC paid only cursory attention to Russian bitterness over Yevgeny Plushenko losing the gold medal to the American Evan Lysacek, even after the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin weighed in with neo-cold-war disdain. The 2014 games are to be held in Sochi, a Black Sea resort, and Russia will be the host. For viewers seeking an international playing field, CNN may be a better bet.

Youch! Here’s the thing. Stanley is of course right (and she’s apparently not the only one complaining), NBC’s coverage is very ‘rah, rah America.’ However, as someone who grew up on both Canadian and American coverage of international sporting events I can tell you this is not a new phenomenon: American coverage has always been like this. Something, Americans who grew up near enough to the Canadian border to get CBC or CTV coverage can also attest to.

I suspect that if the uber-patriotic tone of NBC’s broadcasts is getting special notice this time around it has more to do with viewers’ ability to tune into a wide variety of coverage and voices via the Internet than it does with a change in tone. The Internet has simply made everyone more internationally savvy and more sensitive to its lack…except for NBC, who may or may not be aware the Internet actually exists as it relates to the Olympics.

NYT:

If Mr. Obama thought he could take the rostrum in the House chamber and restore his image as the change agent who came to Washington to end the politics of division, he received another reminder just how hard that will be. Mr. Obama tried to recapture the magic of his yes-we-can campaign after a season of no-we-can’t governing, but conceded little if any ground to critics on either the right or the left. It was a confident performance, more defiant than contrite, more conversational than soaring.

Politico:

In a favorable light, his State of the Union speech may have revealed the mind of a leader who has never cared much about traditional ideological categories and is determined to create his own results-oriented composite of ideas from across the spectrum. Less charitably, the address could be interpreted as the work of a president who is desperately improvising by touching every political erogenous zone he and his advisers can think of.

Under either judgment, however, it was inescapable that his 69-minute speech — for all the rush of words and policy ideas — was a document of downsized ambitions for a downsized moment in his presidency.

Joe Klein:

This was Obama at his best. He wasn’t cuddly, but who cares? He was smart and he was funny–and he was drop-dead serious about the country. The speech should do him some good, but it’s not enough. Now he has to preside, in the true sense of the term. He can’t let himself get caught up in the tawdy doings of the Congress. He has to stand above the muck, leading, jawboning a sense of responsibility–as he did tonight.

538:

Obama is making a lot of arguments tonight that the WH should have been making for months now.

Ed Morrissey:

Impact: No grade, as SOTU speeches rarely have ANY impact except as scorecard later on everything not pursued. Not a game changer…

Andrew Sullivan:

Ending DADT: it’s the right thing to do. But I note that he has committed only to working with Congress and the military to end the ban this year. If he achieves it, I will stand up and cheer. But I have experienced enough crushing disappointments to believe it will actually happen….This was the president I supported and still support and will support because he alone is calling us away from the cynicism, the ideology, the rhetorical poison, and the red-blue divide that keep us from the reform we desperately need.

Sarah Palin:

This is why people are disenchanted and becoming more and more disengaged really from what their government is doing because when we see an issue like this, words spoken that may not be true, coming from our president, and embarrassing our Supreme Court and not respecting the separation of powers, we have a problem and that’s illustrated there by that justice there mouthing those words, ‘not true,’ now one or the other is being disingenuous here, either our president in what he just claimed or the Supreme Court justice…and I think its going to be a huge take away moment from the speech tonight.

Big Government:

I doubt that President Obama helped himself or his party with his State of the Union Address. A year ago, such a speech might have done him some good and would have done him no harm. By now, however, too many people are aware that they are being had. If anything, his decision to continue pushing his signature measures — cap and trade and healthcare reform — is likely to wreak havoc on his party in November.

Alessandra Stanley:

Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address was as much about his state of mind as the nation’s: the president repeatedly asserted that he feels as strongly about the impasse in the capital as ordinary Americans do…The adage says that in a democracy, people get the government they deserve. Mr. Obama used his time before Congress to posit that, actually, the American people deserve a better legislative branch.

The Awl:

Obama has never chanted “USA, USA, USA” before in his life. And it shows. Apart from that? I give that a pretty high marks for an ending. We don’t quit! I don’t quit! It was like a really good car commercial, back when we made cars.

The Sartorialist [In our Liveblog, 9:52 mark]

Obama’s tie = British-style left-to-right “repp stripe”; Biden’s = American-style right-to-left (http://socyberty.com/history/the-rep-tie-and-its-colorful-history/) Who approved those optics!?

“…Brian Williams has spent much of his tenure at “NBC Nightly News” as a young Turk competing against two older, avuncular and laid-back newsmen, Mr. Gibson and Bob Schieffer of CBS, who filled in after Mr. Rather left his post ahead of schedule. With Ms. Sawyer’s arrival, the three network anchors are evenly matched in looks and take-charge personality.

– The New York Times‘ TV Critic Alessandra Stanley weighs in on the debut of Diane Sawyer.

Stanley’s takeaway from the move is that Sawyer taking over for Charlie Gibson means she, Katie Couric and Brian Williams are now “evenly matched in looks and take-charge personality.” Also, from earlier in the column: “Ms. Sawyer appears to have the same high-octane drive and ambition as Brian Williams and Katie Couric.”

Besides the clear shots at Gibson – what, was he just sitting in the anchor seat half-asleep every night? – the drive and take-charge personality could be argued for each anchor. But what exactly does “evenly matched in looks” even mean? But more importantly, how would (and should) it ever be relevant?

Much of Stanley’s piece was spent praising Sawyer on her interview with Iranian Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which was the centerpiece of her debut show. Stanley took it to the next step, writing that the first night suggests Sawyer “seems intent on exotic travel and big ‘gets.’”

There also seems to be one clearly incorrect part of the column (which follows the path of her reputation). Stanley writes Brian Williams “has spent much of his tenure…competing against two older, avuncular and laid-back newsmen, Mr. Gibson and Bob Schieffer of CBS.”

This is there to make the point about the ‘new breed’ of anchors, now that Gibson is gone. But this characterization of Williams’ competition doesn’t add up. Williams took over NBC Nightly News in December 2004. He competed against Dan Rather at CBS until March 2005, then Schieffer after that. But only until August 2006, when Couric took the chair. So Williams has spent much of his tenure competing against Couric, and not one of those “older, avuncular” types.

—–
» Follow Steve Krakauer on Twitter

Levinson is quick to point out that filmmakers are never supposed to take their critics to task for unfavorable reviews but that he is “compelled” to respond this time: “I am going to criticize Alessandra Stanley, the TV critic for the New York Times. I am not going to criticize her on the basis of what she may not like about my recent film essay Poliwood, but I am going to take her to task for her blatant inaccuracies.”

In this case, Stanley’s inaccuracies, according to Levinson, begin with an earlier critique of a Walter Cronkite documentary (which Levinson was not involved with) which made it sound as though Cronkite was the only broadcaster on TV during the JFK assassination (he was one of three). Says Levinson: “To defend her thesis she had to carefully eliminate two networks from history — and two chairs. Yet this is what Ms. Stanley does: she alters reality to fit her thesis.”

On to Levinson’s own Poliwood, a documentary about “the intersection of politics, media, and entertainment.” Levinson feels strongly that Stanley missed the point of the piece entirely.

“In politics, the only thing worse than no access, is too much access.” She goes on to say, “At its core the film is a screed about everything that was wrong with politics and media during the 2004 election, carried over and misapplied to the 2008 campaign.”

For the record, the film essay has nothing to do with the 2008 campaign. That’s why there is no footage of the candidates leading up to the conventions, and no footage of them campaigning on the road, leading up to the election.

Also, this:

At another point, Ms. Stanley goes on to state that my observations about the media were incorrect because the media did not determine the outcome of the 2008 election. Like her previous comment, the fact that Obama won was not the point of the piece. That’s for other filmmakers to make. That’s for other filmmakers to make. But, Poliwood does address the importance of telegenic (TV friendly) political figures, of which Obama is one of them. Is Ms. Stanley suggesting that Obama’s attractive appearance, his ability as a great speaker, his youth and vibrancy, and his story of rising from poverty as shown on television had absolutely no effect on him becoming President of United States?

So yes, once again let us note that Stanley’s history is such that she makes for an easy target in the fact-checking department. Of course, drawing conclusions and making suggestions is actually part of a critic’s job and are quite different than glaring factual errors. And it does seem that in this case, Levinson is, in fact, “going to criticize her on the basis of what she may not like” because he is actually just pissed off he got a bad review in the New York Times.

For the Times critic, though, the charm has worn thin, at least on 30 Rock. Stanley sounds conflicted when she writes:

But the other striking thing about the new season … is the acting limitations of its star and creator, Tina Fey. Ms. Fey is one of the funniest comedy writers on television and a gifted mimic (Sarah Palin), and she is at her worst playing a comic version of herself.

Stanley doesn’t buy Fey as Liz Lemon — the “hapless single head writer of a late-night sketch comedy show” — noting that the comic distortion of Fey “doesn’t track.” She prefers the feisty version of Fey (“fearless about mocking politics, the entertainment business and NBC”) to the pathetic side of Lemon who “dresses badly, is a junk-food glutton, can’t get a date.” To hear Stanley tell it, those afflictions are unnatural and implausible for a “thin, beautiful” actress.

Though it’s perfectly reasonable to prefer a biting Fey to a bumbling one, it is curious logic to cite the impossibility of her awkwardness given the constant self-deprecating and autobiographical nature of her comedy. And just last year, Stanley was praising the dissonance in Fey’s character: “Fey cultivates a “sexy librarian” look on 30 Rock, with foxy glasses and décolletage that slyly defies the show’s premise that her character, Liz Lemon, is a homely nebbish,” she wrote in Vanity Fair.

Is 30 Rock hitting a slump or is Stanley just falling out of love?

However! That’s not to say the President didn’t repeat himself. In today’s New York Times Alessandra Stanley says the interviews were “as tightly choreographed — and eerily similar — as the multiple Magritte bowler-hatted men milling in the remake of “The Thomas Crown Affair.”” Snap! But what if anything did this uber media savvy President have to say about the press is spends so much of his time courting? Mostly that the media loves rude. And he said it a lot.

Obama used the word rude in no less than four interviews when talk turned to media coverage (perhaps this is the PC translation of ‘jackass’). So there you have it, turns out the President know exactly what it takes to get on a TV in a “hot second” he’s just not employing it because, in the words of Peggy Noonan he’s doing so much TV because “because he can, because people do what they know how to do.” Maybe he will embrace his own “rude” side this evening when he stops by David Letterman. One can only hope. The health care bill needs a slogan! In the meantime here’s a ‘rude’ look at Sunday’s magical media tour.

“The media encourages some of the outliers in behavior, because, let’s face it, the easiest way to get on television right now is to be really rude.”

ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos

And — and sometimes I think that, frankly, the media encourages some of the outliers in behavior, because, let’s face it, the easiest way to get on television right now is to be really rude. If you’re just being sensible and giving people the benefit of the doubt and you’re making your arguments, you don’t — you don’t get — you don’t get time on the nightly news.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You might on Sunday morning, but&

OBAMA: But if you — if you say something outrageous, you’re there in a hot second.

CBS Face the Nation

And I have to, one last point I’ve got to make, Bob, and that is I do think part of what’s different today is that the twenty-four-hour news cycle and cable television and blogs and all this, they focus on the most extreme elements on both sides. They can’t get enough of conflict, it’s catnip to the media right now. And so the easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody. In that environment I think it makes it more difficult for us to solve the problems that the American people sent us here to solve.

NBC Meet the Press

And— unfortunately, we’ve got, as I’ve said before, a 24-hour news cycle where what gets you on the news is controversy. What gets you on the news is the extreme statement. The easiest way to get 15 minutes on the news, or your 15 minutes of fame, is to be rude…Well, you know, the— I— I— I do occupy— a pretty special seat at the moment. But— but I do think that— look I mean, let’s face it, the— if you look at the news cycle over the last— over the last week— you know, it— it— it hasn’t been the— the sensible people who, you know, very deliberately talk about the important issues that we face as a country. That’s not the folks who’ve gotten a lot of coverage.

CNN State of the Union

I think it’s important for the media, you know – not to do any media-bashing here – to recognize that right now, in this 24-hour news cycle, the easiest way to get on CNN is or Fox or any of the other stations, MSNBC is to say something rude and outrageous…If you’re civil and polite and you’re sensible and you don’t exaggerate the-bad things about your opponent and you know, you might get on one of the Sunday shows. But you’re not going to be on the loop. And, you know, part of what I’d like to see is all of us reward decency and civility in our political discourse.

(h/t Newsbusters)

(photo via Washington Post)

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs seems like a nice enough guy. He has a sense of humor about his work, he maintains a friendly banter with reporters, and he was even the goalie of the North Carolina State Wolfpack soccer team.

But Gibbs largely gets a free pass from the media for his many blunders. Just this past week, his attempts to brush off Sarah Palin’s comments on health care backfired, and he gave Iranian election protesters a major slap in the face when he referred to Ahmadinejad as “the elected leader” of Iran. Both times, there was a bit of hubbub that quickly blew over.

How does he do it? Maybe Gibbs is the Alessandra Stanley of the Obama Administration; he could just be skating by on his personal charm. A more sinister theory is that members of the White House Press Corps are afraid that if they criticize him, he’ll cut off their coveted access, a la Ari Fleischer under Bush. In comparison to Bush’s press secretaries, Gibbs has made a good impression overall. But has he earned it? Decide after you read these:

1. Sarah Palin’s Healthcare Comments

Sarah Palin’s Facebook note about “death panels” managed to sidetrack the health care debate for a good two or three days, which no doubt frustrated Gibbs and the White House. But Gibbs’ snark yesterday about how “you [reporters] cover a lot of process and you cover a lot of — you cover noise and heat and light” was the wrong kind of dismissal, and did nothing to brush the matter away. As Kansas City Star columnist Yael T. Abouhalkah put it:

Sorry, but when the former vice presidential candidate of the Republican Party says something that quickly enters the national debate over health care — no matter how ridiculous it might be factually — it’s worth talking about, if only to discredit it.

2. “Elected Leader” Ahmadinejad?

Gibbs put his foot in his mouth on August 4th when a reporter asked if Ahmadinejad was “the legitimate president of Iran” and Gibbs responded that he was “the elected leader.” Gibbs’s intent seems to have been to artfully delegitimize Ahmadinejad, but he inadvertently made it sound as though the White House recognized the disputed results of the Iranian election. Gibbs eventually backtracked, saying, “whether any election was fair, obviously the Iranian people still have questions about that and we’ll let them decide that. But I would simply say he’s been inaugurated and we know that is simply a fact.”

3. Laff-A-Lympics

Gibbs has a habit of joking and laughing away tough questions. When Politico‘s Patrick Gavin looked into the matter in May, he found more than 600 instances of “(Laughter.)” from both Gibbs’ and the Press Corps’ end in press briefing transcripts — more than ten each day. Sometimes, this falls into the “charm” category, but when Gibbs does things like laugh at the size of the national deficit, as he did in April, he comes across as tone-deaf.

4. Taking on Cheney

On March 16th, Gibbs briefly channeled the HuffPo comments section when he responded to Dick Cheney’s remarks that the U.S. was less safe under Obama than it had been under Bush by quipping, “I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy … so they trotted out the next most popular member of the Republican cabal.” When you’re the White House Press Secretary, show a little respect for the former Vice President, even if you disagree with him.

5. What Joe Biden “Meant to Say” About Swine Flu

If protecting the White House from the press is like being a minesweeper, then protecting Joe Biden is like being that crazy guy from The Hurt Locker; there are just too many gaffes to defuse. That said: on April 30th,  Gibbs attempted to spin Biden’s infamous “closed container” remarks on swine flu into a handy health advisory. Jake Tapper called him out for not saying anything “remotely close to what [Biden] said.” Gibbs’s response? “I understand what he said, and I’m telling you what he meant to say.”

6. “The Fraternal Order of Police Endorsed McCain”

When a reporter asked if Obama’s remarks during Gates-Gate would lead to a backlash among police groups, Gibbs responded, “I think the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed McCain, if I’m not mistaken.” It quickly shot to the front page of Drudge. No doubt Gibbs had prepped the response, but it came out at the wrong time in the wrong way, and made Obama’s response to the situation seem vengeful.

7. Monarchy in the UK

Gibbs unwittingly kicked a hornet’s nest in June when he told reporters that the Obama administration was working to get the Queen to attend D-Day commemorations in Normandy. As Swampland noted,

Buckingham Palace protocol demands that Her Maj receives a formal invitation before traveling to a foreign country. Gordon Brown has insisted that if the Queen wishes to attend, he’ll sort her out an invitation. Gibbs’s intervention seemed to suggest that the Prime Minister was too impotent to deliver on his promise without White House help.

As it turns out, the White House hadn’t even been in contact with Buckingham Palace; Gibbs was winging it. The Queen did not end up going to the commemorations; Prince Charles attended and represented Britain at the D-Day commemoration ceremonies.

UPDATE – Robert Gibbs Fact-Check’s Mediaite’s Gaffe List

This post has been corrected and updated since publication.

The exchange reads thusly:

Q. Specifically, some people inside the paper believe that Alessandra has been allowed to continue as a critic, without sufficient punishment, because she is close with Jill Abramson. Your response?

A: We love a conspiracy theory, but the truth is simple: Alessandra has been allowed to continue as a critic because she is — in my opinion, among others — a brilliant critic.

As for the perception that some New York Times stars (ahem, Maureen Dowd) get special treatment, Keller had this to say (hint: he blames it on the editors!):

If any editor finds a factual error in any piece by any writer at this paper and fails to point it out because the writer might yell or because the writer is thought to be a favorite, then that editor is failing to do his or her job. Stars or purported stars are obliged to get their facts right. Editors are obliged to edit everyone without fear or favor. Period.

The Times published an especially embarrassing correction on July 22, fixing seven errors in a single article — an appraisal of Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchorman famed for his meticulous reporting. The newspaper had wrong dates for historic events; gave incorrect information about Cronkite’s work, his colleagues and his program’s ratings; misstated the name of a news agency, and misspelled the name of a satellite.

How did this happen? Hoyt responds, and his “short answer” implicates just about everyone.

The short answer is that a television critic with a history of errors wrote hastily and failed to double-check her work, and editors who should have been vigilant were not. But a more nuanced answer is that even a newspaper like The Times, with layers of editing to ensure accuracy, can go off the rails when communication is poor, individuals do not bear down hard enough, and they make assumptions about what others have done. Five editors read the article at different times, but none subjected it to rigorous fact-checking, even after catching two other errors in it. And three editors combined to cause one of the errors themselves.

Ouch. Interestingly, Hoyts seems to suggest that Stanley’s “hastily” written piece may have suffered from having too long a deadline, as opposed to too short a one. The article, it turns out, was penned on June 19, almost a full month ahead of Cronkite’s death on July 17.

On June 19, Alessandra Stanley, a prolific writer much admired by editors for the intellectual heft of her coverage of television, wrote a sum-up of the Cronkite career, to be published after his death.

Stanley said she was writing another article on deadline at the same time and hurriedly produced the appraisal, sending it to her editor with the intention of fact-checking it later. She never did.

And neither did any of the numerous editors who looked at it it would seem! Also interesting to note is that Hoyt refers to Stanley as a “much-admired” writer. Of course one assumes she must be admired if the Times insists on keeping her on despite her record of errors — errors, which Hoyt says “undermine the authority of a newspaper.” It’s a record that the Times appears to have chosen to ignore in the past: in March of 2008 in a ‘Talk to the Newsroom’ feature, TV editor Stephen Reddicliffe did not address one question regarding Stanley’s history of errors. That said, not only are they keeping her on, they are (arguably) rewarding her by reinstating her personal copy editor whose sole responsibility will be to fact and copy check all of her articles (a reader points out the copy editor will likely have other responsibilities in addition to editing Stanley). Embarrassing yes, but also wow, what a luxury!

Worth a read, too, is Hoyt’s play-by-play of how the article made it to publication: he notes that it passed through the hands of five editors and demonstrates how each one dropped the ball in some way. This process could not be more at odds with the blogosphere where there is often little or no editorial filter; instead items are quickly corrected as their errors are (often quickly and ruthlessly!) brought to light by the reader. In this particular case the Times looks to have suffered from too many cooks in the kitchen. Something they are apparently aiming to address by adding another editor to the obituary department. Perhaps they should just wikipedia out their entire obituary department and be done with it.

“I had to smile, albeit a tad ruefully, and I think he would too, when I saw the New York Times correcting a piece that had appeared following his death. The article contained not one, not two but seven errors about [Cronkite's] life and career….The paper issued a correction that seemed as long as the article itself.”

They did indeed! Here’s the correction in its entirety (far longer than anything, say, Maureen Dowd has ever been on the receiving end of):

Correction: July 22, 2009 An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International.

More from Couric:

Walter Cronkite used to say ‘Get it first, but get it right.’ So as we say goodbye to the Dean of TV news, let’s all remember as journalists when we say “That’s the way it is” – it really is.”

Stanley, of course, is almost as well-known for her errors as she is for her writing. TVNewser, is speculating that Couric’s smackdown may have been retribution for a not-so-nice profile Stanely penned about Couric back in 2005, which contained passages like this:

“But lately her image has grown downright scary: America’s girl next door has morphed into the mercurial diva down the hall. At the first sound of her peremptory voice and clickety stiletto heels, people dart behind doors and douse the lights.”

And this:

But “Today” has turned her popularity into a Marxist-style cult of personality. The camera fixates on Ms. Couric’s legs during interviews, she performs in innumerable skits and stunts, and her clowning is given center stage even during news events. “Today” hit a low point in July, when Saddam Hussein appeared in a Baghdad courtroom to hear the charges he will face when he goes to trial as a war criminal. All the networks interrupted their programming to show live images of Mr. Hussein – all except NBC. “Today” stayed on Ms. Couric swatting shuttlecocks with the United States Olympic badminton team.

The article – sourced completely anonymously – kicked off a wave of Couric scrutiny and “morning show wars” coverage back in spring/summer 2005. Not long after, rumblings began about Couric moving on. You know the rest.

Watch CBS Videos Online

You know the type — think Maureen Dowd saying to Biz Stone, “Did you know you were designing a toy for bored celebrities and high-school girls?” (At this point, prominent Twitter users included Senator Claire McCaskill, Senator John McCain, and Dowd’s colleague on the op-ed page, Nicholas Kristof.) In this case, Doyel sputtered something about how “Twitter is the teeny bopperification of America, the dumbification of America,” using the text-speak shorthand “LOL” to prove his point. Then he complained that there were “too many conversations going on in the world” — which indicated a lack of familiarity with Twitter’s “unfollow” option — and advised that we “cut out all these corporate Christmas cards of communications which is all Twitter is.” Huh? Which is it? Is Twitter teeny-bopperification or corporate Christmas cards? And by the way, care to cite any example or statistic to back up your claim? Even one?

“You can’t possibly hear everything, so let’s just listen to nothing and play Sudoku all day long,” said Doyel, proving that the dumbification of America clearly started with him. He went on to loudly assert some other stuff that he failed to substantiate in the least.

What was amazing was the absence of any discussion about Twitter as a real-time communication tool, brought into sharp relief by the incredible events in Iran, still unfolding at the time of Sunday’s broadcast. Sanchez mentioned it briefly, saying that Twitter gave him as much information about Iran as he would have learned from “my network, the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post combined” — but then Kurtz asked Doyel about journalists on Twitter, and he used the opportunity to say something uninformed yet again. (At no point did Doyel indicated that he was aware of Twitter’s role in reporting information from Tehran.) Gawker‘s Cajun Boy shared my incredulity, calling it an “utterly useless but incredibly ironic debate over Twitter’s relevance.”

Just to be fair, I searched out Doyel’s initial column on Twitter to see if he’d had anything worthwhile to say there, and to his credit he did seem to have looked at a few sports-related Twitter accounts. But his protests about how, “Hey, I’m not a crank, I get blogging!” seemed to indicate that he didn’t understand that Twitter was a micro-blogging site — same thing, just less of it, with greater interactive functionality. (He went on to describe Facebook and MySpace as “the impossibly impersonal Internet version of the corporate Christmas card” — same phrase he used on Reliable Sources about Twitter — which indicated that he did not understand his own column.)

But here’s the real reason you know he has no clue: “But Shaquille O’Neal on Twitter? Makes no sense at all.” Um. Dude, are you not a sports guy? If you don’t get why tracking The Real Shaq would be appealing to sports fans — never mind the rest of us! — then maybe you’re in the wrong line of work.

Judging by Doyel’s column and appearance on Reliable Sources, here’s my guess at the #1 reason why a fan would want to read an athlete’s Twitter feed directly: To filter out idiot sports reporters like Doyel.

***

Here’s another tip for journos writing about Twitter: It isn’t new, it’s just new to you. It existed before Ashton Kutcher joined in January, before David Gregory joined in February and before Oprah sent everyone into paroxysms of excitement by joining in April.

That’s why I got annoyed a few weeks ago reading the AP’s headline about Sockington, the Twitter cat: “Sockington: Twitter’s Latest Star A Microblogging Cat.” Really? Twitter’s latest star? That’s funny, because I remember Sockington being a hit at ROFLThing in January. And getting a ridiculous number of nominations for the Shorty Awards in February (he didn’t win but he certainly made a dent).

Wait a second — Sockington only had 10,000 followers at ROFLThing! That’s not a star! Ashton has 1 million! Here I am playing the part of clueless journalist new to Twitter. Now I am playing the part of the Internet: O RLY? Let’s not forget how different Twitter was back then (remember, kids, Internet time runs at warp speed). The numbers were smaller, before the media-on-Twitter explosion and before the celeb-on-Twitter explosion. Ten thousand followers was a pretty big deal.

But wait, there’s more! Sockington’s 10K was even more impressive because it represented a doubling from just two weeks before.

Still not impressed? Okay, how’s this: On April 17th, when Oprah joined Twitter, she got 150,000 followers instantly. How many followers did Sockington have at that time? More than double that — over 350,000.

My point — and I do have one — is that Sockington was not “Twitter’s latest star.” That is a flat-out factual error, a misrepresentation that betrays a lack of understanding of Twitter’s history. (That would be a history of months.) It’s not hard to check this stuff — hello, Twitterholic! — but way too many journalists just don’t.

***

Final pet peeve: Alessandra Stanley. This is actually not about the error in her Twitter column back in February (David Gregory was actually not an “early Twitter enthusiast.” His first tweet was on Feb. 11, 2009. Twitter launched in March 2006. Sheesh.) It’s about her gall in calling out David Shuster for following someone back:

David Shuster, the host of “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” on MSNBC, is so eager to interact with potential viewers that he contacted a fictional character who had been created to monitor Twitter anonymously. “Hi, maria troffa (matroffa), David Shuster (Shuster1600) has requested to follow your updates on Twitter!” (There are no updates: that Maria Troffa doesn’t exist.)

Not only is this a totally scummy move, but it betrays — once again — her basic lack of understanding of her subject. There is no positive duty on David Shuster’s part to verify that an actual person named “Maria Troffa” exists. That “person” may not exist under that name, but somebody activated a Twitter account with that handle, and followed David Shuster with it. So the character may be fictional, but the Twitter account sure isn’t. It’s here, with protected updates, following 21 people including Shuster, Gregory, Norah O’Donnell, George Stephanopoulos, Jimmy Fallon and NYT colleagues Nick Kristof and Virginia Heffernan. (21 people? She followed 21 people in order to get up to speed on journalists on Twitter? Wow. Thorough.)

So, knowing all that, let’s reread her statement, shall we? Doesn’t seem quite accurate, does it? Not the follow part, her characterization of Shuster’s eagerness. She said he was “so eager to interact with potential viewers that he contacted a fictional character.” But how can that be a measure of his eagerness when it was her fraud? It can’t be. That’s almost worse than not bothering to fact-check about Gregory; that’s willful misrepresentation. And you’re the one fretting about journalism?

***

Twitter may have a cute-sounding name, but it exists, it generates a ton of content, it implicates all types of people, and it has nuances that are important to get right. Hopefully, its careless rendering by sloppy journalists won’t lead to the dumbification of America.