Journalism

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has aired a glowing memorial to Paul Moran, its cameraman who was killed in March by a suicide bomber while filming the war in Iraq. The broadcast features fond recollections from Moran's colleagues, friends and family, while glossing over and rationalizing Moran's work for the Rendon Group, the secretive PR firm that has worked behind the scenes to promote the U.S. foreign interventions in Iraq and elsewhere.

One of America's leading newspaper executives took the Bush administration to task Wednesday for what he termed an "unsettling trend toward governmental secrecy." Tony Ridder is chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, the industry's largest and most important trade organization. Speaking at an October 8 luncheon at the National Press Club, Ridder said the current fear, frustration and anger felt by many veteran journalists in the nation's capital is "unprecedented, even going back to the dark days of Watergate."

A new study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes shows that a majority of Americans have held at least one of three mistaken impressions about the U.S.-led war in Iraq and those misperceptions contributed to much of the popular support for the war. The three common mistaken impressions are that: (1) U.S.

"Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council today temporarily banned two popular Arab satellite television stations from covering the council's news conferences and entering government ministries because of what it called 'irresponsible activities' that threaten the country's 'democracy and stability' and encourage terrorism," the Washington Post reports. Al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya were slapped with a two-week "penalty" for allegedly violating "media-conduct rules," which were outlined for the first time in today's edict.