Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
PR Watch has exposed the antics of Steven ("the Junkman") Milloy more times than we can stand to remember, as he flacks for the tobacco industry, speaks up for asbestos, and attacks environmentalists as "terrorists" and "fear profiteers." Nowadays he writes a co
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Jeffrey Chester and Gary Larson have drafted a "plan on behalf of a more democratic media system, a collective effort to ensure that alternative, independent voices will still be heard over the growing din of conglomerate media culture. " In the Internet age, they say, "The sad irony is that never before have we had such communications power at our disposal, in the form of new digital technologies that allow any of us to be producers as well as consumers of media content.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The news media have criticized the tangled finances of companies like Enron and WorldCom, but Howard Kurtz notes that many of them are engaged in similar deals themselves. For example:
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
According to Harold Evans, the real mystery surrounding the president's shady stock dealings with Harken Energy is "why the watchdog media didn't bark during the 2000 presidential election, when new unflattering evidence emerged in the month before the vote. ...
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Richard Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review, has written a letter protesting the U.S. State Department's "slipshod, deceptive, and, now, even thuggish" treatment of one of its reporters.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Despite a complaint by Commercial Alert and threats of legal action from the Federal Trade Commission, most of the Web's largest search engines have not yet complied with federal requirements that they inform users about deceptive "pay for placement" deals that smuggle commercial placements into search results.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
In the immediate aftermath of September 11, coverage of hard news skyrocketed and ratings went off the charts. Since then, however, "the networks are slipping back into their bad, old habits," which authors Leonard Downie and Robert Kaiser describe as "the shallowness, the obsessive attention to celebrities, and the pandering to advertisers that has crept in to news gathering during the last decade."
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The University of Wales in the UK will mark the first anniversary of 9/11 by hosting an international conference about TV news and transnational audiences. According to conference organizers, "The news media are central arenas of political conflict and public debate. The proliferation of satellite news channels brings new transnational configurations of audiences into being that may have unpredictable consequences for states, governance and citizenship.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Someone who calls himself "Fred Curran" has been creating "parody" websites attacking environmental groups including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Pure Food Campaign.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"I have seldom been lied to so blatantly in my life," Amit Pal, editor of the Progressive Media Project, writes from Egypt. "On June 20, we had a lunch meeting with Nabil Osman, who is the chairman of the State Information Service here. He assured us that censorship was a relic of the past in this country, having disappeared after the 1970s, and that the press was free to criticize anything or anyone, including the president.
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