PressEthic

Forget about replacing newspapers, blogs are on their way to replacing psychologists. Who knew?

For some, especially academics, blogging can be an double-edged sword. It can get you fame, it can get you glory, and sadly in some cases it can get you fired.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, who seemed to disappear from historical non-fiction radar after it was determined that one of her books was significantly plagiarized, is back with a new book. She’s now on a massive publicity tour, and expects to be once again back atop the best seller list. What happened to the woman who violated the number one rule for writer’s everywhere and why is everyone so quick to forgive and forget?

Everything The New York Times wants you to know about this Texas lady......but do we really care that she was good at sports in the 10th grade?

No this post is not about the baseball playoffs. It’s about The New York Times and their embarrassing defeats in the last few years. With players like Jayson Blair, Judith Miller, and several sketchy anonymous sources, it has been argued that maybe the Times is not the record that we once thought.

While China recently vowed to keep the foreign media away, via the internet, from its citizens, it seems a little strange to be hearing in the The New York Times today about the newest edition to Chinese media, Vogue Magazine.

While I have a newfound appreciation for blogs after taking this class, they, like any internet posting site can get one into trouble if not used correctly. As Fernando Ferrer certainly knows, after faking a blog entry on his campaign site, one must respect the rules of the blog. Rule number one: If your name is attached to a post, make sure you are the author of it…

China is second in the world, only to the U.S., in terms of its internet users. Yet while the internet is popular in the communist country, the Chinese government recently realized that they only wanted “healthy” news to infiltrate their country via the internet. Good thing we don’t live in a Chinese bubble.

I’m sure that a number of kids in our class have accounts on Facebook and Myspace.com, but little did you know that anything you say on these sites, including those quirky off-beat tidbits of your profiles, can be printed without your permission for the world to see. Is this ethical? My local paper thought so.

While the survey about Ivy League women's dreams about being housewives and mothers was GREAT, the survey published last Friday about teen sex was informative, though surprisenly misleading.

With newspaper readingship slowly decling, it is the newsroom and its employees that are being hit where it hurts. No readers equals no jobs.

Is the media doing harm or helping by purposely not printing pictures of celebrities lighting up? While children are spared the idea that smoking like celebrities will make them “cool“, is it really the magazine's responsibility to provide them with these false images?

It is a known fact that newspaper readership is down. A study done in 2004 by the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that readership had gone down by 10% since 1990. Advancements in technology are sure to blame, but what kind of news are we getting from these new outlets? Or is just all news old news?

On a lighter and sweeter note, the September 12 issue of the New York Sun included an article in its business section that detailed the end of cheap box cake making for Kosher Jews. Where is the justice??

While the confirmation hearings of John G. Roberts seem to pale in comparison to the body counts and relief efforts in Mississippi and Louisiana, it doesn’t hurt to take a closer look at who will likely be the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because as we’ve learned from Michael Brown and Bernard Kerik, what we don’t know can hurt us.