PressEthic

On the day FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) celebrates its 20 year anniversary here in New York, founder Jeff Cohen goes on Democracy Now! to promote his new book, "Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media."

Another conflict of interest arose when veteran Supreme court reporter Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times spoke at Harvard and explicitly expressed her views of the policies of the current Bush administration. The Times' 'Public Editor' addresses the ethical dilemma of free speech and journalistic integrity.

Google's got partial text of e-books online. Newspaper readership is shifting from print to online. Anyone care to curl up with a good e-book?

Sony has been working on a new product which will be made available this month in select areas. The Sony Reader is their attempt to contribute to the demise of paper.

A segment on NPR's weekly media criticism show, On The Media, addressed a huge topic, an elephant in the room that should be discussed extensively both in the public and within press circles. Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, interviewed two reporters from McClatchy Newspapers, John Walcott and Warren Strobel about reporting on the runup to war in Iraq and a possible war in Iran.

Flicking through Sunday’s New York Times, I was astounded by the way news had quite literally been pushed into a corner. On page two of the main news section, Gucci, Chanel, Rolex, Movado, Mikimoto, Tagheuer, Barneys New York and Perles de Tahiti all headlined, while the news summary nestled inconspicuously in the top right hand corner.

The news networks are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to celebrity and famous criminal subjects in exchange for exclusive interviews and personal video footage. How much is their ethical integrity worth?

Conflicts of interest in journalism have been the topic of much debate inside the media lately. Most notably, the ever-evolving situation at the Miami Herald highlighted the reprecussions of journalists from ostensibly neutral sources working for organizations with a clear opinion or platform.

In the conspiracy theory video given to me by the Investigate 911 group at the 9/11 memorial services this year there was a University of Wisconsin- Madison professor Kevin Barrett that supports the beliefs of the Investigate 911 group. Now, Barrett is back in the news as he is comparing Bush to Hitler. I am not surprised at this line of conversation because I have heard it many time before. What I am interested in is the fact that CNN.com is writing about it. The University has agreed to let Barrett teach the course and his views as long as students are allowed to challenge them.

It’s a relief to see that most journalists have respectfully held back a bit on this story. It's one that needs to be covered, but not over exposed.

The Associated Press reported under "Industry News" on their website that on September 29th, news organizations filed a lawsuit challenging a Florida law that bans reporters from conducting exit polls less than 100 feet from the voting stations, on the grounds that the law is unconstitutional and violates their rights to free speech. The election supervisors argue that the reporters are a nuisance to voters. Are exit polls worth potentially deterring people from voting?

A former Washington Post reporter openly discussed and unveiled his liberal biases in several interviews during the course of promoting a new book.

Anything but tight-lipped, Thomas Edsall, a senior political reporter for the venerated Post, casually admitted his liberal leanings, easing his conscience and aiding conservative camps who claim liberal biases in the media. Of course, Edsall’s new book, "Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power," examines conservative tactics.

The initial television coverage of the plane crashing into a building in the Upper East Side focused on the possibility of terrorism, but was the real story ignored?

YouTube's $1.65 billion dollar price tag - and the willingness of Google to lay it down - is yet another indication of a larger shift away from traditional media and towards the online forum.

Google purchased YouTube, the popular video-sharing website, on Monday for $1.65 billion in stock. Google's hope is that YouTube will prove to be as lucrative an enterprise as it's viewership suggests. The risk, however, in investing in an as-of-yet "unproven" dot-com business is apparent, and reminds us of the dot-com boom of the 1990's, explained an article in the New York Times yesterday.

In yesterday's "Daily News," I read an artcile that reminded me that racial profiling is still an issue that's alive and well. The article, "Cops: We were told to profile," discusses how an order was given to stop and frisk all black men at a robbery-plagued Brooklyn subway station. Captain Michael Vanchieri, commander of Brooklyn Transit District 30, told his officers to stop and firsk all black men becuase the descriptions of the suspects "vaired a lot." Ironically enough, NYPD is the only major police department in the country that has supoosedly banned profiling. This article recieved little to minimal coverage and I feel its pretty significant news. The article was placed directly above a loose dentures and viagra ad. Let me know if you guys saw the article and your opinions on it.