The Daily Howler

The Daily Howler is an American political blog written by Bob Somerby. It was perhaps the first major political blog, started in 1998. The style is at once 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).

The Daily Howler is probably the best known 'media monitoring' blog that has an extensive track record of criticizing bias on both sides of the political divide.

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.

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:

External links

• The Daily Howler

Donate to Wikimedia