Fox News launching pro-business tv October 15th

According to Drudge, Fox News is going to be launching a business network called Fox Business Network (FBN). Rupert Murdoch says that the network is going to be pro-business in a Forbes article says:

“We have long considered the business television market to be underserved,” Murdoch said. “Having built Fox News into a cable news leader and a cultural phenomenon against all expectations, I’m confident Roger Ailes can do the same in business news.”

Murdoch indicated that Fox Business Channel will follow the FNC template in the way it reflects his philosophical outlook and the way it differentiates itself in tone and attitude.

“It will have a more pro-business stance … CNBC leaps on every scandal. It’s a negative attitude,” he said. “I won’t announce too much detail on the programming, because everything we say, CNBC will immediately copy.”

Fox News has dominated dominated 24 hour news by making it entertaining and pro-American. They have been a platform for people who would have never been invited on CNN. It’ll be interesting to see if Fox Business Network has similar success.

Anyone else have iPhone fatigue?

Is anyone else tired of hearing about the iPhone?

Before fellow Apple fans start yelling at me, I’m buying one on the 29th. I just can’t take anymore iPhone buzz. We get it, it’s a new kind of phone without buttons, just one big screen. It’s hard to tell who’s worse, the media or bloggers? They’re both regurgitate the same thing over and over again and drooling like you wouldn’t believe.

UPDATE: Apple iPhone Hype Machine in Overdrive

Reporters donate to politicians

Does anyone else see a problem with this picture?

A CNN reporter gave $500 to John Kerry’s campaign the same month he was embedded with the U.S. Army in Iraq. An assistant managing editor at Forbes magazine not only sent $2,000 to Republicans, but also volunteers as a director of an ExxonMobil-funded group that questions global warming. A junior editor at Dow Jones Newswires gave $1,036 to the liberal group MoveOn.org and keeps a blog listing “people I don’t like,” starting with George Bush, Pat Robertson, the Christian Coalition, the NRA and corporate America (”these are the people who are really in charge”).

According to the New York Times ethics policy:

Companywide, our goal is to cover the news impartially and to treat readers, news sources, advertisers and all parts of our society fairly and openly, and to be seen as doing so…

Does anyone else see a conflict of interest here?

UPDATE: Other bloggers see the problem too, check out some of the headlines:

1. MSNBC Confesses, “Maybe The Media Is Bias…”
2. The Next Time A Journalist Tells You That He/She Is “Impartial” And/Or Has “No Affiliation”…
3. The next time RTD’s Michael Hardy writes something…
4. Journos and Political Contributions
5. Unbiased Journalism Under Threat From Both Sides

Bloggers and journalists can work together

Ask any journalist what’s the first place they turn to research a story, they’ll tell you it’s the internet. For a few years there has been an absurd (and hyped) rivalry a between bloggers and journalists. It never made sense to me. Bloggers typically excel in owning little niches, while journalists are professional writers. Journalists ideally document life as impartially as possible, while most bloggers stick to a code of ethics, we certainly aren’t impartial.

Relevant Example:
My Target blog was recently referred to in a newspaper article about Target. The the author of the piece sent me a note asking for a link to his article. I gladly complied and gave a biased subjective analysis of the piece. My blog gave the newspaper readers a great outlet to get more in depth, and the article gave my readers an unbiased overview of the the retail market in Orange county. Win-Win.

UPDATE: A friend who read this post mentioned that “biased” (paragraph above) is a poor word choice.