'Daily Show' catches Fox using old footage to embellish story

I continue to worship at the altar of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Last night, my husband said we had to watch Tuesday night's show because he'd heard the crew makes a good catch that embarrasses Fox News. Sold. We watched and indeed the error was huge. Fox used old footage to make a weekend rally seem much larger.

What's more, Sean Hannity, whose show the clip was used on, admitted the wrong and even credited Stewart and his team with the find.

Here's "The Daily Show" clip:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Sean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck's Protest Footage
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Here's Hannity's response:

Headliners at The Onion: Peeling Back the Skin

The pressure is on with this blog post. How do you write about The Onion on a level worthy of its humor? I'm not sure so I won't bother trying. For an interesting behind-the-scenes peek at how The Onion works, check out this article in The New York Times.

Barking up the wrong tree with journalism?

There are few better signs that the journalism industry is going to the dogs than the craigslist ad I see every so often under the "writing/editing jobs" section of the D.C. site. "PET LOVERS WANTED" the teaser states. Thinking it's a publication looking for someone to write about pets, I inevitably click on it only to find out it's a Bethesda, Md.-based dog-walking company looking for people to walk dogs. Interestingly, the ad asks that applicants be able to commit to the job for at least six months. That's more job security than many journalists get!

Journalism gets hoax-y

I have said before that the race to be first rather than correct is dangerous. It's always nice to have your beliefs reinforced -- even if it comes at the cost of the reputation of the industry in which you work. That's what I have been finding this week. First I read an Associated Press article about how often news organizations have been duped during the fall season. The biggest hoax was balloon boy, of course.

The main missing ingredient in every case was, as the story says, "a heavy dose of skepticism." By getting information out too quickly, without enough research, news organizations run the risk of starting urban legends. And no matter how much they correct the wrong info later, there are plenty of people who've already bought into the original story. Heck, that's why Web sites like my beloved Snopes exist.

In sorta kinda related news, a documentary called "Starsuckers" takes a look at celebrity journalism (as in tracking celebrities, not journalists who morph into celebrities), namely those who appear regularly in the British tabloids. Read more about the movie here and then go add it to your Netflix queue, right under "The September Issue," documenting Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue.

With balloon story, media full of hot air

In the biggest non-news of the day we have the story of the 6-year-old boy who scared America on Thursday when everyone thought he was trapped in a concocted hot-air balloon that somehow got loose from its tethers in the boy's backyard. I say "everyone" because it was on all the news stations and home pages of every news outlet's Web sites. As we all know now, the boy, Falcon Heene, was safe and sound the whole time -- in the attic of his parents' home.

When I saw this "breaking story" -- and indeed, it is broken -- yesterday, I thought, "That's a shame if the boy's in there. But why is this such big news?" Happy to find out he was safe, I still wondered, "Who besides his family and friends cares?"

This morning I was innocently eating some cereal while NBC's "Today" show was on and there they were, ready to talk more about the biggest non-news event I can think of at the moment. The segment began with Meredith Vieira talking about the Heenes' appearance last night on CNN's "Larry King Live." It was during that interview that little Falcon said he didn't come out of hiding even when he heard people shouting for him because "we did it for the show."

And therein lies a sliver of news. If the whole thing was a hoax, shame on the Heenes and their insatiable desire for 15 minutes of fame. (They also were on the enlightening TV show "Wife Swap.") But the media should feel the most ashamed for letting this balloon (pun intended) into a circus act. I've used this space before to ask the media to turn the investigation on themselves and I use it to do that again. Who cares why the family pulled a hoax, if they did? And why is that more deserving of coverage than actual news?

For examples, see these two exemplary videos from the greatest American media man out there today:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
CNN Leaves It There
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Queer and Loathing in D.C.
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Jon Stewart might be the only person deserving of both a Pulitzer and an Emmy.

Journalists can't find jobs

The New York Times has a really depressing story about twins who graduated 17 months ago from Rutgers University and moved to New York City -- aka media mecca -- only to find they cannot get jobs in the industry. They've sent a combined 150 resumes and tried innovative self-promotion techniques like playing music in the subway in exchange for business cards rather than money.

As I read the story, I couldn't help but wonder, "What's wrong with them?" In other words, there's gotta be something about them that makes them unappealing to employers. I don't know what their GPAs were in college, but they seem like interesting, engaged and hard-working women. Then I wondered if maybe they are going for the wrong gigs, but of course aside from the few opportunities the Times listed, I don't know what they are applying for.

I think the bottom line is it is just incredibly difficult to get a journalism job these days. I have friends in the D.C. area who are about ready to shoot resumes out of cannons in an effort to blanket the city in job applications. I am interested in seeing how the journalism job market evolves in the next few months and even years.

Enrollment up at J-schools

The job market might be in the toilet, but enrollment in journalism graduate and undergrad programs is on the rise. Why? "Journalism schools are also trying to give students the tools they need to invent new models of the profession." The schools are teaching students multimedia skills to make them more marketable and more capable. When I went to the University of Florida for my bachelor's degree in journalism, the specialties were segmented into reporting, editing, photography, etc. I took the editing route, and although I still took several reporting classes, I also took newspaper design and copy editing classes. I was also required to take photography. The thinking was (and still is, it seems) the more you know about the various aspects of what goes into a paper, the better you'll be at editing.

But the Web was just beginning to emerge as something interesting, and I took a Web site design class as an elective. Now students learn to blog, tweet and do video just for the Web. It will be interesting to see what the new grads come up with.