It's the little mistakes that you see in each day's newspaper that make you wonder what the heck's going on. You know the "paper of record," The New York Times is having trouble, when it creates a new problem for itself by making a mistake in a correction. This story by William J. Broad, misattributed […]
A Reuters dispatch puts the blame for the crackdown on Cuban dissidents squarely where it belongs -- on America. The headline: Rising Dissent, US Pressure Led to Cuba Repression
Granted, I work for the newspaper and all too often all the TV "journalists" do is swipe stories from the morning paper (they learned this in college) and read them on air. Because there was a pitching change in the Padres game, I flipped up a channel to see what was on, catching just a […]
There's been a lot of debate both in the blogosphere and in the mainstream media about CNN executive Eason Jordan's confession in Friday's New York Times that CNN had first-hand knowledge of the torture and brutality behind Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but kept quiet. CNN stayed silent for two reasons: First, to protect the lives of […]
According to Jonah Goldberg over at National Review Online, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, wife of Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, was on the Today show talking about last night's decapitation strike on Saddam Hussein. After 4 bunker-busters hit the site Saddam was believed to be at, there won't be much left of Saddam to identify. DNA […]
Michael Kelly was the first U.S. journalist killed in Iraq last week when the Humvee he was riding in crashed. Kelly was an excellent writer and editor. He will be missed. When word of Kelly's demise hit the Union-Tribune's watercooler, the consensus seemed to be that he shouldn't have been there in the first place […]
...but the computer is assembled and I'm back to limited blogging, probably for about another week. Anyway, the "professional journalists" who discuss media issues over on the Society for Professional Journalists mailing list once again have shown that they lack critical thinking skills. The incident that has caused a very minor uproar on the listserv […]
Alterman's take on Bernie Goldberg is to nickel-and-dime the former CBS newsman to death. Anyone who's read Goldberg's book knows it's not a scholarly work. It is a series of recollections on a subject. Goldberg is loose with his language, which is not surprising. Alterman punishes him for it, which is also not surprising. However, […]
Well, I sent out a response to the SPJ-L listserv to the one I made below, prompting a number of irrelevant responses. One person responded that the operation in Kosovo was a NATO operation -- "totally within Europe, was not UN." And this is relevant how? Clinton went to war without U.N. approval. NATO is […]
I subscribe to the Society of Professional Journalists Internet listserv. Why? I'm not sure exactly. It long ago stopped being a forum for discussing journalism issues. It's now mostly a right-bashing club, with a lone conservative (who's not even a journalist) presenting himself as a whipping boy for a bunch of leftists, from America and […]