Journalism

The U.S. Education Department paid $700,000 to the Ketchum public relations and marketing firm, to produce two video news releases and to rate newspaper coverage according to how favorably reporters described the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind law in 2003. Democratic Senators Frank R. Lautenberg and Edward M.

"Can a journalist be too truthful?" That's a question that some media pundits are asking after Farnaz Fassihi, the Wall Street Journal's Middle East correspondent, sent a private email to friends with an unusually candid description of the deteriorating U.S. control over Iraq and the dangers of doing her job there. A copy of her email began circulating on the internet. "One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation," she wrote.

Journalism professor Jay Rosen has written another of his characteristically long-winded but thoughtful ruminations on the fallout from the Dan Rather memo affair and what it means for the long-running battle between conservatives and the "liberal media," as well as for the more recent contest between traditional media and online bloggers.

Slate magazine editor Jack Schafer wonders why it took CBS anchorman Dan Rather so long to back away from two now-discredited memos that were part of the documentation for its story about George Bush's National Guard service.