PressEthic

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai held a press conference with President George W. Bush yesterday at the White House. During the question and answer session, President Bush defended the war in Iraq, and President Karzai backed him up. Karzai conjures up American post-September 11 rage with an impassioned ire in his voice that print is unlikely to convey accurately. However, it would have been nice if someone had tried.

A New York Post article covering Condoleezza Rice's reaction to Clinton's appearance on Fox News shows no qualms in blatantly bashing Clinton in a "hard news" story that appeared in today's paper. The article describes Clinton as overly heated and argumentative, but makes little to no mention of the reason behind his "red-faced" outburst, despite the fact that Clinton makes it perfectly clear in the interview that he is upset about the conservative bias of Fox News and Chris Wallace. Is the right-leaning slant of this article ethical?

People want to see numbers to validate an argument and we, as journalists, give it to them (with the help of research organizations, centers that gather data, think tanks, etc). But, numbers can be interpreted different ways and what we choose to include in our articles will influence what the reader understands to be true.

It's difficult for most in the industry to conceptualize. It's just the way things have always been - a writer has an editor. And we need them. Or do we?

A recent survey by Research 2000 found that conservative talk radio hosts were less willing to take calls from dissenting listeners than progressive pundits.

The Center for Individual Rights filed a suit charging the white people are being excluded from a journalism recruitment program that focuses on minority students.

Yesterday I read an article in the Daily News about FDNY firefighter, Rick Fowler, who worked at ground zero after the attacks and is now of welfare. I was disturbed about the angle in which the media decided to cover this topic. In the article, the Daily News decided to interview other firefighters who were in the same state of desperation instead of directly attacking the reason at hand. According to the Daily News, "Fowler, who needs nine medications to get through his days, was denied because he had resigned rather than retired." Why didn't the reporters interview the head officials at the FDNY regarding why he would have to be retired to get any type of medical assitance? Fowler, in many ways, is one of the heroes who saved many lives during the attacks and this is the thank you he recieves? If this isn't news, I don't know what is.

In the midst of a war with Iraq, the New York Times is more focused on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's squash game than his defense policies. I couldn't help reading this article and laughing. Is this newsworthy?

As our class discusses media bias -- and Eric Alterman paints the country conservative -- perhaps we ought to define our terms so we avoid talking past one another.

We've been talking and reading about bias so much lately that I'm seeing it everywhere. It's like when you learn a new word and then you start hearing people say it.

This past Sunday, former President Clinton got visibly upset in an exclusive interview on Fox news. The reason: the percieved bias of interviewer Chris Wallace and Fox news in general.

Clinton agreed to be interviewed on Fox to publicize the amazing fundraising success of the Clinton Global Initiative. This humanitarian NGO raised an astonishing 7.3 billion dollars in contributions over the past week.

Under which circumstances and to whom should journalistic confidentiality be extended? Whistleblowers, legal and corporate leakers...kidnappers?

During a time when the bias of corporate media is raising much public discussion, it is bloggers who emerge as the full-blooded watchdogs of the 21st century. The most recent example of the altered dynamics of electronic news caught my eye this morning, when CNN aired a segment on recently declined oil prices. According to CNN, bloggers are suspecting republicans to be responsible for the drop to below $60 per barrel. After all, a positive change in oil prices would provide republicans a convenient advantage in the upcoming midterm elections. According to a USA Today poll, much of the nation appears to share the bloggers’ suspicions: 42% of about 1000 participants believed the Bush administration to have “deliberately manipulated the price of gasoline so that it would decrease before this fall’s elections.”

The first story that popped up was titled ‘Hugo Chavez, Latino Male Oprah?’ and appeared to be more of a diatribe than a liberal bias expose.

Is perceived bias in media a result of preferential reporting or a reactionary audience? When I posed the question of liberal bias in the media to friends and family, the responses I received related directly to the socio-political affiliation of the individual.

In a three-part series that began its run today, the New York Times published the findings of a year-long investigation into New York State's town and village courts. These findings are horrifying, but the article is inspiring as a reminder of the tremendous good that journalists can do.