Mediagazer: Fox News Focuses On Benghazi Attack While Largely Ignoring Hurricane Sandy (The Huffington Post)

9:40 AM ET, November 2, 2012

Top News:

Margaret Sullivan / The Public Editor's Journal:

Under Attack, Nate Silver Picks the Wrong Defense — “Anybody that thinks that this race is anything but a tossup right now is such an ideologue, they should be kept away from typewriters, computers, laptops and microphones for the next 10 days, because they're jokes.”

Discussion: US News, The Awl, @nytjim, Hollywood Reporter, @choire, @jackshafer, Mediaite, @chanders, @moorehn, @jeffjarvis, Addicting Info, The New Republic, The Raw Story, Pressing Issues, ABCNEWS and The Huffington Post

Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:

Sorry, Margaret, You Need to Get Out More — Times public editor Margaret Sullivan has a post up taking Nate Silver to task for daring Joe Scarborough to a bet over who would win the election. Basically, she says making a bet like this diminishes the Times and he shouldn't have done it.

Discussion: @felixsalmon, @moorehn and Quote and Comment

Mark Walsh / MediaPost:

Social Media Harsh On Presidential Candidates — Social media isn't getting behind either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. In fact, it's downright negative about both presidential candidates, according to a study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Discussion: Journalism.org

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Pew: ‘MSNBC was more negative in its treatment of Romney than Fox was of Obama’ — Between the last week of August and the third week of October, 38 percent of campaign coverage studied by Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism was “what is typically called horserace coverage …

Discussion: Journalism.org

The Huffington Post:

Fox News Focuses On Benghazi Attack While Largely Ignoring Hurricane Sandy — Fox News prime-time hosts barely mentioned Hurricane Sandy on Wednesday night, even as MSNBC and CNN reported non-stop on the massive cleanup efforts just south of Fox's Manhattan studio and throughout the surrounding region devastated by the storm.

John Cook / Gawker:
Roger Ailes Offered Bush Administration “Off the Record Help” in Private Note

Discussion: The Wrap, Mediaite and The Huffington Post

Christine Haughney / Media Decoder:

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia to Lay Off Staff and Reduce Magazines — Like many New York companies, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia had a difficult week. The basement of the company's offices in west Chelsea were flooded by Hurricane Sandy, sending staff members home for the week …

Discussion: Thomson IR, AdAge, eMedia Vitals, paidContent, MinOnline, New York Post, Deadline.com, MediaPost, Media & Entertainment, New York Magazine and FishbowlNY

Jeff Bercovici / Forbes:

Why Time Magazine Used Instagram To Cover Hurricane Sandy — If there was still any debate about whether serious photojournalism can take place in the context of camera phones and cutesy retro filters, it's over now. — To document the effects of Hurricane Sandy on the northeast …

Discussion: NetNewsCheck Latest, Folio and Poynter

Jeff John Roberts / GigaOM:

HuffPost Live's new iPad app could be a second screen breakthrough — The Huffington Post launched an iPad app Thursday that may one day pave the way for tablets to dethrone TV as king of our living rooms. The app, called HuffPost Live, offers a strong mix of entertainment and social interaction and …

Discussion: eMedia Vitals and NetNewsCheck Latest

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Journalist Attempts To Silence Criticism Of Her Ethics By Brandishing The Club Of UK Defamation Laws — Defamation is only supposed to apply to cases where there's a factually false statement made about someone. It shouldn't apply to cases where the facts are accurate, or the statements are opinions.

Associated Press:

CNN Bomb Threat Closes Streets — ATLANTA (AP) — Police closed streets and sidewalks around CNN Center in downtown Atlanta as they investigated a chemical bomb threat, but found no such device during a search of the complex. Atlanta police spokeswoman K.Y. Jones tells The Associated Press …

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

Quartz Exceeds First-Month Expectations — Atlantic Media Company launched the business news site Quartz in late September, aimed at the world's financial elite with a mobile-first approach. The content designed in an app-like setting ideally performs well enough on smartphone and tablet platforms …

Mat Honan / Wired:

Twitter Launches Election Map to Track Candidates' State-by-State Messaging — Twitter's new election map measures voter engagement on a state-by-state basis. — Twitter launched a new interactive map on Thursday that measures the effectiveness of President Barack Obama's and Governor Mitt Romney's tweets on a state-by-state basis.

Discussion: Marketing Pilgrim, Twitter Blog, buzzfeed.com, PandoDaily and Mashable!

Alex Ben Block / Hollywood Reporter:

George Lucas Will Use Disney $4 Billion to Fund Education — Spokesperson for Lucasfilm tells THR the majority of the sale price will go toward educational philanthropy. — By the end of the year, the $4.05 billion sale of Lucasfilm to Disney should be finalized.

Discussion: /Film, Geekologie, Vanity Fair, Mashable!, Digital Spy and Softpedia News

CBS Los Angeles:

Walt Disney Co. To Donate $2M To Hurricane Sandy Relief Efforts — BURBANK (CBSLA.com) — The Walt Disney Company announced Thursday it will donate $2 million to relief efforts from Hurricane Sandy. — The company split the donation into two parts — $1 million for immediate relief efforts …

Discussion: VH1 Celebrity, PopWatch and The Walt Disney Company …