PressEthic

The blissful days of unsoiled public records are long gone. Unless one never attended a fraternity party during college or shared inside jokes via email, his or her most embarrassing moments could become public knowledge within seconds. Thanks to internet search engines, we have less of a control over our public legacies than ever before. An honor student’s plans of a bright future may take a hit if a potential employer comes across an internet diary or an album of spring break photos on Google.

All hope is not lost, however, for those of us who want to fence away our digitized private lives. According to NPR’s Morning Edition today, we can now hire a professional to neatly customize our Google legacies—and for a reasonable rate.

An article in Editor and Publisher today reported that The O.C. Register in California has joined up with iMedia, a network that sells "interactive national advertising." The Register will include CD-ROMs in the paper on the last Sunday of every month. On the CDs will be entertainment and music news, interviews, and music/movie previews. iMedia is paid by national and local advertisers for ad space on those CD-Roms. The Register will contribute by adding music and movie updates from iMedia itself on the newspaper's website. Has the integration of media gone too far?

A lengthy article in the Sun describes Miller's recent testimony for a trial of two men accused of conspiring with Hamas. Where is the rest of the coverage on this case?

We're all too witty for each other.

In a book review for The Times by David Sirota, Lou Dobbs reveals a new side, one that possibly panders to the audience at CNN and conjures questions disingenuousness, as the anchor was never a champion of the little man until recently.

Two self-ascribed neutral media watchdogs have come out with reports showing a conspicuous left-wing bias in major media coverage of the recent election. Before nodding off to sleep or quickly passing over to the next blog, we've heard this all before, think for a moment how refreshing it might be - or perhaps dangerous - if politicians, organizations even individuals would just say, "Hey, I'm not neutral at all, I call it like I see it, and I see it from my own point of view."

I'm sitting at Bobst now, reading bunch of magazines from OUT (a gay magazine) to the Advocate (a gay and lesbian magazine) to the Vanity Fair (seemingly hetero-sexual) to Islamica (Muslim magazine) to the Newsweek. I swear I would change my last name if I buy the Newsweek again. (Changing one's last name is a big thing for Confucians like me.)

A Fox News internal memo was leaked on the Huffington Post, telling reporters to be on alert for celebrations among Iraqi insurgents, after the Dems won the House and Senate and Rumsfeld resigned. The Fox News result: "Some reports of cheering in the streets on the behalf of the supporters of the insurgency in Iraq, that they're very pleased with the way things are going here and also with the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld." Wonder where they got that from?

I'm a big fan of Oriana Fallaci's. She died in last September in Florence, months after making the world mad at her with her blunt criticism against the radical Islamism. This month’s issue of Vanity Fair carries Christopher Hitchens’ account of what made Fallaci Fallaci. Hitchens explained, in other words, what made her interviews worth reading.

USA Today's Peter Johnson blogged recently on the effort major media networks are plying into online forums in an attempt to reach new audiences. What I am unsure of, however, is if they realize many in the 'new audiences' they are trying to reach are actually disengaged viewers who left.

MySpace may prove to be the downfall of Justin Seay, more commonly known as one of the inebriated Chi Psi fraternity boys in the hit comedy Borat.

And Can a Video Game Where the Player is OJ Trying to Commit the Murder and Get Away Be Far Behind?

An interview with the ex football player will air on Fox later this month, in which he describes how he would have murdered Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman if he had actually done it.

Now that the much anticipated film has finally been released, many of its subjects are up in arms.

We know that print media is struggling with floundering subscriptions, how is radio faring?