PressEthic

CNN.com ran an article today about the fact that the Repulican party had three black candidates running this election and all of them lost. The article accuses the Republican party of trying to tout these black candidates as the new face of the repulican party in order to get more votes. Whether this is true or not is not the issue here. The problem is that the article used pretty loaded terms and phrases that suggest the author's point of view on the issue. The article makes Republicans sound ridiculous for trying to brand 2006 as the year of the black republican- their words not mine. The way the entire article is written it makes fun of the Republicans efforts.

He built this city on rock n roll

In an attempt to embrace the new media that challenges traditional twenty-four hour cable news channels, CNN launched a big internet-meets-television event they cleverly called an E-Lection Night Blog Party.

After waiting 12 years to win back control of the House of Representatives, Democratic leaders still took a conciliatory tone Wednesday, pledging cooperation and non-partisanship.

A cursory glance at the Senate race between Jim Webb and George Allen echoed Florida 2000, as Virginia – a longtime bastion of Republicanism – was swept under in the wave of Democratic advances during the midterm elections.

The student newspaper for Northwestern University, one of the leading journalism programs in the country, retracted a story that included plagiarized material and severed ties with the writer. News of the retracted story made it onto Poynter Online, another reminder of just how careful journalists need to be nowadays.

Unlike in previous years, Slate was unable to publish leaked exit poll information yesterday. Why? Because the consortium members from Associated Press, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and CNN who are responsible for analyzing the election data were apparently locked up in quarantined rooms for most of the afternoon, cell phones removed.

This morning as I watched "Imus in the Morning" a confrontation between Chris Wallace of MSNBC's 'Hardball' and Joe Scarborough was discussed, in which Scarborough was accused of media bias. The story was blogged about on NewsBusters, a media ethics website dedicated to "Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias." The blog relays the content of the Matthews-Scarborough exchange while also criticizing Matthews' attack against Scarborough. But are discussions of politics inevitably going to be partisan? Can political pundits really claim to be fair and balanced?

Some journalists seem to have a hard time admitting it when they can't explain an event.

Comedy Central's blog predicted Rumsfeld's resignation 12 hours before the mainstream media broke the news. Is this an example of restraint by sensationalistic outlets, or yet another reason that traditional news sources are losing their audiences?

Can there be a steadfast rule when it comes to the revelation of potentially defaming or detrimental personal information of one's subjects?

Several Florida newspapers have requested access to a list of those who received government aid after Hurricane Katrina, an AP article reported Tuesday. This is problematic because disseminating such information may invade the privacy of those affected.

The New York Times ran a story about an Al Qaeda member today under a headline saying, "British Muslim Sentenced in Terror Attacks." Should they put the word, "Muslim," there?

I guess the only surprise is that LA Times editor Dean Baquet wasn’t canned sooner, although you gotta wonder why it happened on Election Day.

Another story about how newsrooms are getting smaller and how inevitably the industry's going down.