PressEthic

On October 5, Neil Brown, Executive Editor of the St. Petersburg Times, printed an op-ed on why his newspaper chose not to break the Mark Foley scandal. The paper had some of Foleys strange emails, and rumors were already flying in the capital. Shouldn’t they have ‘gotten the goods’?

The press walks a fine line between reporting the news and broadcasting agendas of hatred. Never is this more evident than in the case of Fred Phelps and his hateful band of followers who have created a buzz around the country with their provocative act.

Proclaiming that homosexuals will spend an enternity in Hell, Phelps leads an extreme Christian religious group and has created a stir by protesting funerals around America. Recently, his group protested funerals of U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq.

With the ability to view book content online, is the replacement of hardcover by hard drive far behind?

It’s not everyday that a New York Times article reads more like a conspiracy theorist’s wet dream than a statement of fact. So after coming across the piece, I knew I had to blog about it.

I recently read an article in the Washington Square News about candidates using the website facebook.com to campaign themselves. I went to the facebook site to see for myself what kind of resources it offered.

When Fox News talking heads shows interview apologists for "civil disobedience" that undermines free speech on a college campuses, one can't help but feel that the world would be a better place if the whole lot -- anchors and guests -- were in a dunk tank in Times Square rather than on television.

Speculation on Google's acquisition offer to YouTube stirs up a media frenzy. Is it more important to be verifiably accurate or to simply get the story out first?

The Poynter Institute gathered 25 professionals to start asking the tough ethical questions about online journalism and blogging. They came up with more questions than answers, but presented important issues for internet reporters.

How much gruesome war-imagery should we see—what counts as informative and what counts as gore? Should video-sharing sites screen videos that could be propaganda produced by Iraqi insurgents? The U.S. military?

“Jesus is a master of love, and Mohammed a master of hate.” These words were published in an article (translation) by Robert Redeker, on 19th September, in le Figaro, one of France’s largest dailies. The next day, the author, who is also a philosophy teacher, received so many death threats that he and his family had to go into hiding, where they remain today. As the Republic of France is in uproar over this threat to the democratic right to free speech (and rightly so), I wonder: what were editors at le Figaro thinking?

This week two American physicists won the Nobel Prize for their accomplishments in measuring cosmic radiation attributed to a single, explosive event. In addition to providing biographical information about the scientists and informative content on their work many cited this as the final stroke proving the Big Bang.

The Media Lens swung abruptly to Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania this week when news broke about the killings in an Amish community there. Initial sound bytes and headlines tucked descriptives such as "secretive community," "old fashioned" and "odd" into the narrative surrounding the event.

In this week’s Time Magazine, Michael Kinsley offers his analysis of the newspaper’s survival struggle against the impossibly convenient and accessible internet world. Kinsley’s largest concerns stem from financial troubles in newspaper offices, digital classified ads, and bloggers Kinsley refers to as “wannabes.”

Perhaps the most jarring part of his article is his treatment of the latter category:

“…there is blog terror: people are getting their understanding of the world from random lunatics riffing in their underwear, rather than professional journalists with standards and passports,” he states in his lead paragraph.

On Page A19 of October 4, 2006's paper of the New York Times there is an full page advertisement for an organization called SaveDarfur.org. Although there is no other mention about the Darfur situation on the front page of the paper I was happy to see the Times allowing space for this Ad. It features an African child crying over a makeshift grave and I think it really garners sympathy for the plight of the people of Sudan. It also shames America with the words "When all the bodies have been buried in Darfur, how will history judge us?". I really liked this Ad. It politely asks for support to urge the Bush Administration to intercede and overall I was surprised to see it.

Reuters reports for Wired that more people are getting information from the websites of newspapers, while the print readership is declining.