The Daily Howler

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The Daily Howler is a center-left American political blog written by Bob Somerby. It was perhaps the first major political blog, started in 1998. The style is by turns earnest and sarcastic. Somerby criticizes what he considers the media's frequently biased or lazy coverage. In his view, the media frequently latch on to a generally agreed "script" with little regard for facts that contradict the script. For instance, in the runup to the US 2000 election it was frequently said or assumed that Gore was untruthful, but much of what supposedly underlay that script was in fact untrue, misrepresented or greatly exaggerated. He also argues that the media frequently ignore substantive issues and concentrate on trivial ones instead (in the 2000 presidential election, for example, professing bewilderment in response to the candidates' budget proposals while writing repeatedly and at length about irrelevant issues such as Gore's choice of clothes, or in 2006 writing articles about Barack Obama's middle name.)

Bob Somerby is also a professional stand up comic. He has appeared on Larry King Live, with Bill Maher, Bill O'Reilly and with Brian Lamb on C-Span. In college at Harvard, he was roommates with the actor Tommy Lee Jones and former Vice President Al Gore.

[edit] Commentary

From a Columbia Journalism Review article[1]: Bob Somerby needs no introduction, of course, unless your days are spent solely in the brick-and-mortar world...
Paul Krugman opened one of his op-eds[2] for the New York Times as follows:

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A message to my fellow journalists: check out media watch sites like campaigndesk.org, mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com. It's good to see ourselves as others see us. I've been finding The Daily Howler's concept of a media "script," a story line that shapes coverage, often in the teeth of the evidence, particularly helpful in understanding cable news.

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