PressEthic

Since the advent of the internet there has been buzz about incorporating user created content with traditionally produced media. In the field of journalism, it's commonly suggested that video and other interactive content on websites will lead the way out of print and into online. Now Reuters and Yahoo have taken a major step towards integrating the work of citizen journalists with that of professionals.

Rush Limbaugh's blatant bigotry hardly raises eyebrows anymore. Despite the vast popularity of his nationally syndicated radio talk show, the general understanding is that the shock-style conservativism of hosts like Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck differs from actual journalism or even other commentary broadcast programs. It seems, however, that his chauvinism has crossover appeal.

Spewing hate speech is still accepted in some media.

It's hard to identify the single most interesting part of the Lou Dobbs phenomenon. There's his transition from business reporter to anchorman, the conversion of his show from Moneyline to Lou Dobbs Tonight, and his ability to violate CNN's semantic policy and get away with it (like using the term, "war on Islamists"). But it is the way he has combined different formats of journalism and the cable news imitation of it that makes Lou Dobbs such a singular marvel.

"If the U.S. public can be trusted to watch Lou Dobbs and his nativist hate speech, why can't we see Al Jazeera English, which is far less polemical?"

In July, 2002, MSNBC, which is co-owned by Microsoft and General Electric, began to air a program called Donahue, featuring talk show host Phil Donahue. The program, which appeared in a primetime slot, lasted just a few months and was cancelled in February 2003. According to MSNBC, low viewership was the problem; according to the Nielsen ratings, Donahue was the highest rated show on the network in its final month.

Jeff Cohen, a media critic and founder of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, partly attributes the lack of strong left voices on cable news to "a fear of sponsor flight." He says networks are hesitant to air progressive perspectives because, "they know that genuine representatives of the left will often be critical of business."

Why is American coverage of the Middle East so different from coverage elsewhere?

A New York Times op-ed piece claims that journalists' biases are rubbing off on one another.

In an attempt to embrace the new media that challenges traditional twenty-four hour cable news channels, CNN launched a big internet-meets-television event they cleverly called an E-Lection Night Blog Party.

An internal ABC Radio Networks instructs affiliates not to air commercials from about ninety advertisers during its Air America programming. ABC says the advertisers asked to have their commercials removed from the Air America spots, but now one company has said that it did no such thing.

To Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the media circus around them - and the very fact that Maureen Dowd has been sent to write a cover story about them - only reinforces their main point: that the press asleep at the wheel while the government drags the country down into hell.

Yes, the president did say, about his Iraq policy, "we've never been stay the course."

It would be wise for journalists to make their intentions about the use of an interview absolutely clear.

There was something strange about the last week's coverage of the student protests at Gallaudet University, the nation's first facility of higher education for the deaf and hard of hearing. The institution has been mired in controversy over the choice of the new incoming president, Jane Fernandes. Students protesting her appointment have blocked entrances to the campus, and 133 people were arrested. Homecoming was cancelled, and the faculty and the National Association of the Deaf are calling for her resignation, as trustees and administrators reiterate their support for her selection.