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UN NAMES 10 MOST UNDER-REPORTED STORIES FOR 2006 Every year, the United Nations publishes a list of the 10 most serious stories most overlooked by global press. Developing nations, whose situations are often misunderstood or dismissed by news media, as too complicated, intractable, or of marginal relevance, take the spotlight this year. [Full Story] PRESS FREEDOM IS EVERYONE'S FREEDOM The freedom of the press is the freedom of the American people. Not its guarantor, not a metaphorical representation of freedom as an idea, not even merely a mainstay of a free system. A free and independent press is American liberty at work, building and defending itself against the slide toward secret or arbitrary exercise of power, as conceived within or beyond the legal process. [Full Story] CHINA PLANS "SMOKELESS WAR" AGAINST PRESS, DISSIDENTS China's president Hu Jintao has reportedly called for an intensive crackdown on media liberties. While China's government has sought to project an image of a more market-oriented, open system, it continues to forbid basic press freedoms and still persecutes journalists at an alarming rate. [Full Story]
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The non-profit media watchdog organization Media Matters for America has reported that its analysis finds there is no truth to the Matt Drudge allegation that John Kerry's footage of Vietnam combat is inauthentic. According to Media Matters, Drudge deliberately ignored factual reports and evidence of authenticity in order to give priority to unfounded claims made by individuals with a history of distorting Kerry's record in order to benefit Republicans. [Full Story] NEW YORK POST PICKS GEPHARDT, KERRY PICKS EDWARDS The New York Post added a special lead to later editions of its paper yesterday, hoping to trump the journalistic world with an unlikely exclusive: they ran a full-page headlline naming Rep. Dick Gephardt (MO) Kerry's choice for vice-president. It was a monumental error, and rivals were quick to seize the opportunity to make hay. SentidoNews contacted the Post editorial staff for an explanation of how the error occurred, but received no response. [Full Story] EVERYONE THE WATCHER With flashpoint confidence, and frequently, the opinion is put forth that in our information society, the public is largely detached from the activities of its government, as from the production of the information by which such scant contact is permitted. I would not discredit this assertion altogether, but rather would go beyond it, to use the impetus to the observation as a guide toward other, attached meditations. What is our role, as citizens? Are we detached, and if so, what can we do to make contact with the strings of power? We are all watchers. Not spectators, but witnesses who stand guard at the door to our liberty. It is not the information that descends upon us which determines the nature or degree of our independence; it is what we do with the information. Closing our eyes, using resignation as an excuse to shirk civic responsibility, amounts to locking ourselves in a dark corner, locking ourselves out of 'the blessings of liberty'. [Keep Reading] STATE DEPARTMENT PUBLISHES FLAWED TERROR DATA The US State Department has issued a report on the global terrorist threat, giving evidence of the rate of incidents occurring throughout the last year. Allegations surrounding the latest incident of false administration reporting include that there was an effort to make it appear that terrorist incidents had decreased thanks to the war on terror and the war in Iraq. [Full Story] RADIO FREE DRIVEL: BIZARRE COMMENTS SEEN TO PROMOTE TORTURE The Iraq prisoner abuse scandal has entered a new arena: radio broadcasting. A new media fairness watch group, Media Matters, has called on Sec. Rumsfeld to remove Rush Limbaugh's radio program from the American Forces Radio network, broadcast to 1 million American military personnel around the world. The reason? Limbaugh has made several statements apparently condoning or promoting the use of torture. In its letter to Donald Rumsfeld, Media Matters cites Limbaugh as calling the abuses a "brilliant maneuver". [Full Story] NEW STUDY FAULTS MEDIA WMD CREDULITY A new study conducted by the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, entitled "Media Coverage of Weapons of Mass Destruction", finds fault with the deferential nature of mainstream journalism surrounding the Iraq WMD debate, prior to the war. With the finding that journalists on the whole failed to adequately check the exercise of executive power, it would appear that the Fourth Estate failed partly because it mimicked the Congress, which took at face value a line of reasoning not supported by facts. [Full Story] HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS Spain has held its national elections, 3 days after the worst terrorist attack in its history. Now that a new prime minister and a new government is slated to take over, unthinking observers have wasted no time in calling it a victory for terrorists. There is something inherently malicious about this opinion, given the circumstances. First of all, turnout was up 8.46% over 2000. The Spanish response to the attacks was anything but fear: it was an overwhelming declaration of national solidarity and of opposition to violence, manifest in a nationwide total of 12 million citizens standing together in the streets to condemn terror in all its forms. The nature of a democracy is that no circumstance, no political power-play, no forced hand, should prevent the voters from voting their conscience. [Full Story] STONEWALL PRESS SECRETARY White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan today refused to answer questions about whether the President drinks Washington, D.C., municipal water, saying "I'm not going to get into the President's eating or drinking habits." The concern is lead poisoning and dangerous levels of lead contamination found in D.C. water recently. The point may seem minor, but it demonstrates a pattern, taken on this point to an absurd extreme. Last week, McClellan had told the press he would "certainly look into" what water the President in fact drinks. [Full Story] MAINSTREAM MEDIA FAIL IN PUBLIC SERVICE The New York Review of Books has published an article criticizing the mainstream American media of failing to deliver professional reporting and accurate information to the public. The Review reports that "the 'intelligence community' was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush officials were using the data on Iraq. NYRB reports: "US journalists were far too reliant on sources sympathetic to the administration. Those with dissenting views—and there were more than a few—were shut out." [Full Story] A MILITARY COUP REPORTED AS GOOD CITIZENSHIP When President Hugo Chavez was forced from power and sequestered by a faction of the Venezuelan military, The New York Times reported the matter as a decision by the President to resign. The "resignation" was welcomed as a sign that democracy was moving forward in Venezuela, and that its economy would no longer be threatened by a crouching dictator-in-wait. The fact that an elected official who had reportedly voluntarily turned over power was in the armed custody of coup leaders went unreported. In an editorial, they lauded the immediate military appointment of an oil chief, a political arch-rival, to replace Chavez, saying the president had "handed power to a respected business leader." [Full Story] JFK "PROBABLY ASSASSINATED AS A RESULT OF A CONSPIRACY" Four decades have passed since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. There is still no definitive story that lets the public in on the truth of the matter. Long discredited by eye-witness testimony and forensic evidence, the Warren Commission is now believed to be false by 68% of Americans (ABC News poll). But are major news sources reporting fact or fiction when the question is again opened, for occasions such as this, the 40th anniversary of the JFK assassination? [Full Story] E-MAIL ARRESTS IN ZIMBABWE 14 people were arrested in Zimbabwe for circulating e-mails that called for protests against President Mugabe. The e-mails reportedly called for mass demonstrations and violent resistance to overthrow the Mugabe government, which has become increasingly authoritarian in the face of criticism about corruption, incompetence and human rights abuses. [Full Story] THE GRAY LADY'S GETTING GRAYER While one of the items was, appropriately, on the Op-Ed page, the more sinister journalistic infraction was on the front page. The headline was "Bitter Senators Divided Anew on Judgeships." The story details the disagreements, contention and filibusters surrounding the six judicial nominees being held up for confirmation in the Senate. Writer Neil A. Lewis frames it as a mean-spirited standoff between two stubborn, vindictive political camps. There is very little mention of the fact that the judges in question are all widely considered to be way out of sync with the American mainstream, and the Democrats see themselves as standing up for the majority of Americans and the integrity of the courts as a venue for the rule of law as opposed to extra-legal activism. [Full story] WHERE'S THE BEEF? When did journalism become an attempt to gauge the palate of the reader? When did newspapers and broadcasters begin using "readability" and "watchability" as keystones in the arc of their reporting? In the final analysis, it must be said that all artifice is artificial, and so all media are vulnerable to distraction, and to misrepresentation both of fact and of circumstance. Anything assembled or invented, conveyed through media of any kind, is a synthetic entity, and must struggle to remain authentic... [Keep Reading] THE FREE PRESS One of the fundamental concerns of the framers of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights was that the presses which dispersed information among the citizenry should remain independent and diverse. It was understood that a centralized media environment would lend itself to official manipulation, abuse and the threat of new tyranny. [Keep reading] "THE HOURS" & THE MOMENT The film The Hours is not about what most people seem to think. The common wisdom is that this is a film about a writer, and about the effects of her writing over time... or else that it's about an emotional struggle that is transferred from person to person through a series of more or less tenuous or intimate relationships... or that it has to do with the victimization of innocent and fragile souls by a harsh and careless world. [Full Text] REDUCED REASONING & FINANCIAL MYSTICISM Much financial reporting relies on nearly mystical assumptions about collective behavior. Within seconds of a shift in stock markets, analysts flock to televised media to offer their wisdom about the "emotional" causes for sudden adjustments, based on millions of trades. For some, this renders the information useless; for others, it is thought to be perilously misleading and imprecise, not only to those who listen, but also to those who have to do business with them. [Keep Reading] SOUNDBITE THINKING Does soundbite journalism produce a gap in intellectual exchanges among readers and their peers? Does soundbite reporting promote bias and deception? These are the fundamental ethical questions facing 21st century media outlets. Reporting through catchy puns and shocking headlines is attractive for commercial reasons, but may play a significant role in slowing the spread of accurate information and in fomenting mistrust among readers. Another byproduct of the soundbite method is that reporting from diverse sources begins to converge, and a single interpretation of events emerges, without necessarily being founded in reality, much less in responsible reporting. [Keep Reading] | |||||||||||||||||||||
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