PressEthic

If you logged on to MySpace last week, chances are that your entry would have been interrupted by a page for the Rock for Darfur campaign, advertising the various concerts that took place around the United States on October 21. Before you had a chance to "skip" on to your active online social life, however, you might well have been halted by a familiar voice.

While most journalists decried the Tribune Co.'s treatment of the LA Times' editor and publisher, Jack Shafer of Slate.com makes a compelling case for the slimming down of news organizations.

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh attacked Michael J. Fox for faking or exaggerating his Parkinson's disease affliction as part of a political ad in support of stem cell research.

An article written by a teenager in the Gotham Gazette outlined the re-introduction of a bill to lower the voting age to 16 in local elections. If the bill is passed, New York's 16 and 17-year-olds will be able to vote in the upcoming November elections.

Is the media trying to "draft" Illinois Sen. Barack Obama into the 2008 presidential race?

A high school student in Sacramento, California, was tracked down by federal agents after posting an anti-Bush image on her myspace page, CNN reported this morning.

14-year old Julia Wilson’s page featured a photo of the President with a crudely drawn knife stabbing his hand, a slanted red line (the universal sign for ‘anti’) running across his face and a “kill Bush”-caption on top of the page.

“I understand that I went too far but teenage emotions are at a peak, and one day I decided to make a myspace page that just went over the line,” Julia said in an interview with CNN.

Jan Pronk was expelled from Sudan this week for blogging about the Darfur conflict. The NY Times made no secret of its stance.

The Business Section of The New York Times made brief mention today of the possible ethical conflict raised by talk show host Charlie Rose, who is co-hosting a dinner in honor of H. Lee Scott Jr., previous guest to Rose's talk show and Wal-Mart CEO.

Columnist Armstrong Williams will repay the $34,000 dollars of the $240,000 he received from the government to produce ads promoting Bush's No Child Left Behind plan.

The Iraq War took a major turn in the American press this morning, blazing across the front page of The New York Times was the very real possibility that the U.S. could lose the war, allowing Iraq to spiral into a chaotic abyss.

In a reversal of an earlier column, the NYT public editor says his employer was wrong to publish a story about a secret (and legal) program to review banking data to gather intelligence on terrorist transactions.

Boston Globe union leaders recently sought support from Massachusetts politicians and union officials in an effort to bolster opposition against proposed staff and spending cuts. But if one good turn deserves another, what are the implications for future Globe coverage of the unions and politicians who came to the union's aid?

In light of the debate that the evolution story spurred, I thought I'd bring up another interesting religious debate. As I was reading the New York Times online, I came across an advertisement for Fordham University, a Jesuit college.

Democrat Michael Acuri is running against Republican Ray Meier in upstate New York for a Congressional seat. As Election Day nears, the campaigns appear to be heating up with Republicans running a controversial advertisement that several television stations are refusing to air.

Coming as no surprise to the media world, the New York Times Company and the Tribune Company reported bleak numbers on Friday citing low advertising revenue as the culprit.