Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Following recent revelations that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency misled the public about air quality in New York following the 9/11 terrorist attack, the New York Daily News has been crowing about how columnist Juan González "was the first to sound the alarm" that ground zero was a toxic dump after 9/11. As Cynthia Cotts points out, however, the newspaper "was not always so crazy about González's scoop.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Alternative sources of news such as the Internet have made readers "more assertive and far less in awe of the press" than before, writes Jay Rosen. He highlights the case of Chris Allbritton, a former AP and New York Daily News reporter who became "the Web's first independent war correspondent," raising donor funds to support his weblog reporting on Iraq. "The Internet did the rest," Rosen writes.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Salam Pax," the already-legendary writer of a Baghdad-based weblog, tells how his site began as "an internet joke with a friend in Jordan" and grew to become the most famous web diary in the world.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who has spearheaded efforts to abolish limits on media concentration, recently spoke to Newt Gingrich's Progress and Freedom Foundation and shared his thoughts with the Online Journalism Review. Thanks to the Internet, he says, "the problem in society is not concentration and scarcity [of information media] but actually abundance, fragmentation and hyper competition.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The Arab satellite TV station Al-Jazeera has launched its English-language web site, five months after hackers brought down a temporary site at the height of the Iraq war.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Fox News channel talk show host Bill O'Reilly says 'shut up' the way other people say 'um,'" observes Jack Shafer. "On his daily show, The O'Reilly Factor, he uses it as a place-holder for an idea still formulating in his brain. As a way to begin a sentence, end it, or punctuate it. ... He's even heaved this impolite language at entire nations, demanding they recuse themselves from the international conversation. In the half-decade his top-rated show has been on the air, he's called for the muzzling of practically everybody.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"I'd love to make the case that Fox News will suffer irreparable damage to its reputation as a result of its frivolous lawsuit against satirist and author Al Franken, but I can't," writes Paul Holmes for PR Week. "Because the kind of people who take Fox News seriously won't care, and the kind of people who care are already incapable of taking Fox News seriously. ...
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"A clear majority of American consumers are more likely to trust media reports than advertising, according to a nationwide poll conducted by consumer research company RoperASW last month," PR Week writes.
"The study ... showed that 68%
of participants place more weight on news coverage than advertising when determining their trust of individual companies. While just 23% of respondents said they consider the
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
A federal judge has ruled against Fox News in its lawsuit attempting to suppress publication of liberal satirist Al Franken's book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"The U.S. media model works beautifully: For the governing, that is -- not the governed," writes Stephan Richter for the Globalist. "What is truly shocking about the state of the U.S. media today is that, to an amazing extent, the belief to restrict themselves to the facts -- as they are provided by the government -- is willingly accepted by the mainstream U.S. media. ... In most countries around the world, journalists choose their profession with a proud claim that they are part of a permanent opposition.
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