Journalism

Rupert Murdoch's Big Newspaper Scandal

by Anne Landman — July 7, 2011 - 4:42pm

Topics: Journalism, Corporations, Ethics

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch moved quickly to shut down one of his oldest media holdings -- a 168 year-old, best-selling weekly British tabloid newspaper called News of the World -- amid charges that the paper's journalists hacked into the telephones of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, murder victims and their families, and bribed police in exchange for information and tips. News of the World was Britain's best-selling Sunday newspaper. Its last issue will be this Sunday, and will not carry any commercial advertisements.

Murdoch dumped the paper at the same time his media empire, News Corp., is trying to win U.K. government approval to take over British Sky Broadcasting Group. News Corp bid US$12.5 billion for the British Sky Broadcasting, but the government has received more than 135,000 comments protesting the acquisition.

CMD at Netroots Nation, June 16-19, Minneapolis, MN

by Nikolina Lazic — June 10, 2011 - 6:19am

Topics: Citizen Journalism, Activism, Internet, Journalism, Media

Center for Media and Democracy's Executive Director, Lisa Graves, the Director of our Real Economy Project, Mary Bottari, and Senior Fellow on Health Care, Wendell Potter, will be speaking at this year's Netroots Nation convention. The conference will take place from June 16-19 at the Minneapolis Convention Center in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Further details and the agenda click here. Stop by the CMD table at the Exhibition Hall and sign up for our IPad 2 raffle. For the very lucky, there may even be cheese curds!

Skin Care Company Tries to Get "Newsvertising"

by Anne Landman — May 6, 2011 - 12:28pm

A skin care company that claims to have a cure for acne, psoriasis, folliculitis and other disorders is contacting Virginia media outlets and offering to pay them $100 for each person who sees the company's press release and signs up to get treatment. The company asks editors to "consider running our press release as a win-win project." The only problem? Taking kickbacks violates the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics, which dictates that journalists should "refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment ..." and "be wary of sources offering information for favors or money." One editor who noted the corrupting significance of the company's bird-dogging offer to media outlets forwarded the release to the Poynter Institute, a school whose mission is to "ensure that Americans have access to excellent journalism" and to help Americans understand how to tell which journalism is credible. The Institute posted a blog alerting the public to the press release.

Main Source:

Boingboing.net, May 5, 2011

News

New York Times Retracts Information on Front Page Story Implying Union Support for Walker

by Lynn Welch — March 3, 2011 - 2:30pm

Topics: Journalism, Media, Wisconsin Protests

On February 21, the New York Times created a stir in Wisconsin by printing a front page article giving the impression that union families supported Governor Scott Walker's attempt to remove collective bargaining rights from workers. On February 26, The Times retracted information related to this article.

The lead of the story, entitled "Union Bonds in Wisconsin Begin to Fray", featured a former Janesville General Motors employee Rich Hahn, who was characterized as "...a man who has worked at unionized factories, [and] a supporter of Gov. Scott Walker's sweeping proposal to cut the benefits and collective-bargaining rights of public workers." In the story reporters A.G. Sulzberger — said to be the son of New York Times Co. Chairman of the Board Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.— and Monica Davey spend very little time quoting Hahn but a lot of time characterizing him. "He says he still believes in unions, but thinks those in the public sector lead to wasteful spending because of what he sees as lavish benefits and endless negotiations," the story says of Hahn.

Full Transcript of Walker-"Koch" Call

by Page Metcalf — February 25, 2011 - 12:34pm

Topics: Journalism, Corporations, Ethics, Lobbying, Wisconsin Protests

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Here's a complete transcript of the Buffalo Beast prank conversation with Governor Scott Walker Tuesday, from recordings by the Beast. Ian Murphy of the Beast poses in the call as David Koch, a billionaire contributor of Walker's.

News

Who Is Writing the AP's Headlines on the Protests -- the GOP?

by Lisa Graves — February 20, 2011 - 7:30pm

Topics: Journalism, Media, Wisconsin Protests

Madison, Wisconsin -- The Associated Press (AP) has been covering the Wisconsin protests this past week, in a way.

With the wave of cutbacks at papers across the nation, big and small circulation papers rely on the AP for wire stories that are re-published in local papers. It describes itself as "the largest newsgathering organization" in the world. With few national outlets having reporters located in Madison or Wisconsin, the AP is a dominant vehicle for sharing information about what is happening in the state with the rest of nation. The AP is also the dominant news feeder for Yahoo News, and Yahoo is now one of the top five most-trafficked websites in the world. So it matters whether the AP is fairly covering the news, in the headlines and in the bodies of its stories. (The Center for Media and Democracy is on record as a strong critic of corporate media, like the AP.)

Awful PR for the Public Relations Society of America

by Anne Landman — January 13, 2011 - 1:57pm

Jack O'Dwyer, who publishes a newsletter that follows the public relations industry, reports that he and his staffers were blocked from entering an assembly of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). PRSA officials demanded O'Dwyer pay $3,825 in registration fees to enter and report on the conference, while journalists from similar organizations, like PR News and PR Newser, were let in free. Arthur Yann, PRSA's Vice President of Public Relations, said that O'Dwyer and his staffers had to pay because people from O'Dwyer's newsletter "attended last year's conference but never wrote about it." But O'Dwyer did in fact write about the 2009 conference. O'Dwyer also reports other harassment while attempting to attend the conference, like getting an anonymous letter in which the writer threatened to beat him "to a pulp," and being set upon by a flash-mob while he was conducting an interview. O'Dwyer has criticized PRSA for withholding transcripts of their organizational assemblies over the last five years, concealing the names of their delegates and refusing to make available a PDF version of their members' directory. O'Dwyer has also exposed techniques now in wide use by big PR firms that violate PR ethics, like working through front groups and creating and disseminating fake news.

Main Source:

O'Dwyers Inside News of PR and Marketing Communications, January 13, 2011

New Memo Shows Fox News' Unacceptable Level of Bias

by Anne Landman — December 21, 2010 - 1:05pm

Media Matters uncovered another internal email sent out by Fox News' Washington, D.C. Managing Editor Bill Sammon which ordered Fox Network journalists to slant coverage of the climate change issue by "refrain[ing] from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question." The memo is inflammatory because the increase in global annual average temperatures over the last 50 years is a well-established fact.

Main Source:

Alternet, December 20, 2010

Honduras' PR Coup

by Brendan Fischer — December 20, 2010 - 8:03pm

Topics: Journalism, Democracy, Human Rights, International, Lobbying, Propaganda, Public Relations, U.S. Government

Part one of a two-part article. (Go to part two).

Wikileaks recently published documents suggesting that PR spin helped determine the final outcome of the June 2009 Honduran coup. At the same time that a July 2009 diplomatic cable from the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras to top government officials confirmed that the Honduran president's removal was illegal, professional lobbyists and political communicators were beginning a PR blitz, eventually managing to manipulate America into believing the coup was a constitutional act.

Is the "Druggiest Campus" List a PR Stunt?

by Anne Landman — December 16, 2010 - 4:14pm

The Monterey Herald accused The Daily Beast of shameless self-promotion after the news Web site posted a list of what it claimed were the 50 "druggiest" colleges and universities in the United States. California State University Monterey Bay was ranked the seventh most drug-infested campus in the country, which the Herald disputes as illogical and unfair, particularly since UC Berkeley was ranked 46th, and UC Santa Cruz and Humboldt State didn't even make on the list. The Herald accused the article's authors of using shoddy methodology, like surveying relatively small samples of students, and considering U.S. Department of Education statistics for on-campus arrests and drug law citations for 2009, without regard to how aggressively each campus carries out enforcement. Using the latter measure, the Herald points out, would make campuses that actively discourage drug use through stricter enforcement rank higher on the "druggiest" list than would schools that ignore students' possession and use of marijuana and other recreational drugs. The Herald says that rather than shedding light on the problem of drug use on U.S. campuses, but the goal of the authors "was to get newspapers and TV stations in at least 50 college towns around the country to produce stories mentioning the Daily Beast, and it worked exceedingly well" -- and put The Daily Beast at the top of the list for shameless website promotion.

Main Source:

Monterey Herald, December 16, 2010