PressEthic

It is not luck that brought success in Afghanistan compared to Iraq. It is the right and suitable leadership that can plan a success.

Thursday’s New York Times contained what seemed to be a serious examination of “diet doctors” who directly sell untested, and potentially unsafe, diet pills to their weight-conscious patients. At least that’s what I thought.

That’s when I realized it was in the Fashion & Style section, under the headline “A Guide to Weight-Loss Drugs.” Fashion & Style, as in “pink is the new black and diet doctors are the new size 0.”

I didn’t see the print edition, but I’m sure not far away from the article was some Neiman-Marcus ad featuring a 95-pound waif whose stomach hasn’t seen a hamburger since she was 15.

Are we compelled to stories about personal problems of the rich and famous right under reports of nine deaths in Iraq?

Now that I’ve got your attention, let’s talk about the potential for libel in discussing these topics…

Bill O'Reilly wishes Katrina had flooded the UN building. Should he apologize for this comment? 

The JetBlue flight that was forced to make an emergency landing at LAX yesterday was fascinating as an example of the advent of "real-time" news coverage, for lack of a better phrase.

"Many of the 140 passengers watched live coverage of their plight on television monitors embedded in the backs of seats," the Times article said.

Wow. That's a stark crystallization of the character and power of television media today - watching the news on tv as it happens to you.

It's a case study of how the 24-hour television news cycle has made broadcast reporting a kind of stream of consciousness event, with little or no division between the event and it's delivery to the public.

Should newspapers refuse to identify sports teams with Native American mascots?

I was reading The Village Voice and bumped into this article about young american people living abroad. "Get out of town" it was called. And I realized that I read it through without letting myself get distracted at any point by other stories, adds etc.

MTV personalities are engaging are youth, but what about traditional news?

Does keeping it in the family make for more honest companies, or does it just lead to hiring the wrong person for the job?

Newspapers readership among 18-25 year-olds is lower than ever. What can be done to increase it in the future?

I still remember the picture of my father in one of Denmark's tabloids. Coming out of the court house in Copenhagen, having attended a hearing about an employee where he worked. The details about the case I do not remember. What I do remember though

With TimesSelect, The New York Times is turning readers away from some of their best work - unless, that is, those readers have their credit cards handy.

I went through a Danish newspaper online this evening, Politiken, just to catch up on what's happening back there. Expecting to read local Danish news, I was surprised.

Journalism practiced in the U.K. might be more of an extreme sport than it is in the U.S.