PressEthic

I read an extremely interesting article in yesterday's Am News Local section that discussed Queens being the only U.S. county where blacks out-earn whites in yearly income. The thing that I found so interesting was the biased nature in which the article was placed. The article was placed at the very bottom on the opposite side of the local section. What made the placement biased, to me, was that on the front page it had a large picture of rap artist, DMX, accounting a woman being injured during his concert. Why wasn't the article about Queens placed on the front page of the local section? That article,had way more depth

Believe it or not, adore it or scorn it, the most influential and successful cable news channel made its debut on Oct. 7, 1996. Fox News Channel will be raising their whiskey tumblers and anti-abortion bills this week, "celebrating a decade of fair and balanced news" and um, a ratings slump.

Yesterday’s New York Times reported on a proposed bill in Ireland that would help celebrities protect themselves against unflattering and intrusive media coverage. Its most crucial contribution would be a formal definition of “privacy” that could be used in court cases against journalists. The law would also make it illegal to use a person’s “likeness, name or voice” for financial benefit if proper consent was not obtained. Finally, if passed, it would make the issuing of injunctions possible before publication and in a courtroom kept off-limits to the public.

No matter how one feels about sensation journalism, representatives of the press are not likely to be happy about an attempt to legally restrain their professional rights.

Phase II of the Foley scandal is underway, as The Washington Times called for House Speaker Dennis Hastert's resignation. In the op/ed, "Resign, Mr. Speaker," Hastert was taken to task for not doing enough.

An article in Sunday's New York Times discusses the new Harvard magazine called '01238'--the zip code of Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. According to the article, 02138 is a "luxury lifestyle book." What does that mean exactly, you might ask?

A review of a 2001 article, commissioned by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, in order to analyze codes of ethics at 33 ASNE member newspapers.

Accounts of Rep. Mark Foley's behavior reaches the nadir of decorum, but news coverage of the scandal has not been pretty either. On the ABC News web site, a picture of Foley smiling is superimposed over empty liquor and wine glasses below a headline: "Foley Runs to Rehab: Will It Work? "

Six essays on prosecutiions related to the leak of classified information.

"Enough is enough," says Los Angeles Times publisher, Jeff Johnson. At last, someone comes to the defense of the seemingly battered journalistic enterprise. Will he lose his job over it?

The so-called "conservative" Wall Street Journal wrote a surprising piece about "Yoduk Story," a South Korean musical about a North Korean prison camp. This is probably my own bias speaking, but I was surprised and refreshed to see something other than raw politics and economics in the Wall Street Journal.

Seymour Hersh's dependence on anonymous sources.

A $1 million donation by Yahoo Inc. to a journalism fellowship at Stanford University has revived a discussion on the company’s ethics in the wake of a case where a Chinese journalist was arrested with Yahoo's help.

An AP article that appeared on CNN.com on Friday pled the case for Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi Journalist for the Associated Press whose photography led to a Pulitzer Prize in 2005. Tom Curley of the Associated Press questions the U.S. military's decision to detain Bilal, asserting that they do not have hard evidence to prove that he is a threat.

How a "fake" blog prodded cautious news organizations to break a real scandal.

With the release of Bob Woodward's book about the Bush administration's policies in Iraq, I was hesitant to read the Washington Post's coverage of it considering Woodward's affiliation as a Post journalist.