It's still sitting on my TiVo, so I'll hopefully watch it when my vacation hits next week, but two Sundays ago CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes" interviewed the two remaining Democratic hopefuls for president. The interview was so devoid of probing or difficult questions, that even the Columbia Journalism Review had a hard time holding their […]
More than a decade ago when I was a reporter for the Lompoc Record I had a great story drop into my lap. A female student (she was 18) at one of the area high schools (there are two) had received work-study credit for stripping. I'm not talking about removing the bark from wood, I'm […]
THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED It's perhaps the most basic thing you get taught in a journalism class: Get both sides of the story. If Group A accuses Person B of Bad Thing X, you do your darndest to get Person B's side of the story. If Person B doesn't respond, you put that in […]
There's a certain amount of self-interest involved, but I'm going to go out on a limb and defend nutty Bush-hater Chez Pazienza to a limited extent. Pazienza is a blogger in his spare time. His paying gig was as a senior producer for CNN's "American Morning." I say "was" because Panzienza was fired earlier this […]
I came across this article by former PBS ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin in Salon earlier this week decrying the abolishment of the ombudsman job at many media outlets. It's an interesting subject to me, but the most interesting part of the column is unrelated to the ombudsman's job, it's this: The Middle East has always been […]
MSNBC suspended reporter/TV personality David Shuster on Friday after he asked the deeply insightful question regarding Sen. Hillary Clinton's use of daughter Chelsea in the campaign: "Doesn't it seem as if Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" MSNBC's decision to suspend Shuster tells us a lot more about […]
A Veterans Affairs Dept. report notes that military veterans are having a tough time finding work after being discharged. Strained by war, recently discharged veterans are having a harder time finding civilian jobs and are more likely to earn lower wages for years due partly to employer concerns about their mental health and overall skills, […]
Here's a couple more articles on reporters and their political leanings, both from Time magazine. Here's one by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen -- a Hillary Clinton voter. Here's the second by James Poniewozik -- a Barack Obama voter. You didn't think either of them would've voted Republican?
I wanted to highlight this sentence in a Washington Post report that has become boilerplate in any article involving waterboarding. Independent legal experts have called the technique torture and said its use is barred by U.S. laws and treaties under all circumstances. It's missing a word at the beginning: "Some independent legal experts..." The Post's […]
I've repeatedly made the case that journalists would be better off if they admitted their political leanings and did their best to report fairly and objectively and let readers adjust as they see fit for the, to borrow a golf term, lie of the green. I made the case most extensively in this letter to […]