Journalism

NPR Erases Domestic Terrorism

by Anne Landman — May 11, 2010 - 4:05pm
  • Topics: Journalism, Terrorism, Propaganda

    • National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast a story on May 9 by Dina Temple-Raston titled Terrorism in the U.S. Takes on a U.K. Pattern that started out with the following flawed premise:

    Washington Post Teams with Coal Industry Front Group

    by Anne Landman — April 30, 2010 - 1:02pm

    The Washington Post introduced a new web page about politics called PostPolitics.com, and the site's exclusive sponsor is the coal industry's shady front group, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE).

    Main Source: 
    MarketWatch.com, April 28, 2010

    PBS Edits Out Single Payer Proposal

    by Anne Landman — April 26, 2010 - 11:34am

    The PBS television program Frontline selectively edited an interview with a single-payer health insurance advocate, and film footage of people protesting in support of single-payer, to make it look as though they were advocating a public option instead.

    Main Source: 
    Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, April 23, 2010

    Media Feeds Americans Fake News About Afghanistan

    by Anne Landman — April 5, 2010 - 3:43pm
  • Topics: Afghanistan, Journalism, Ethics, International, Propaganda, U.S. Government

    • Glen Greenwald of Salon.com reports that Americans are being fed false and misleading "news" about the U.S. war in Afghanistan because major American media outlets, like the New York Times and CNN, publish propagandized Pentagon accounts of the violence and killing occurring there, without questioning the information they are fed.

    An egregious example of this occurred on February 12, 2010, when NATO's joint international force issued a press release that bore the headline Joint Force Operating In Gardez Makes Gruesome Discovery. The release said that after "intelligence confirmed militant activity" in a compound near a village in Paktiya province, an international security force entered the compound and engaged "several insurgents" in a fire fight. Two "insurgents" were killed, the report said, and after the joint forces entered the compound, they "found the bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed."

    But an Afghan news report about the same incident differed wildly.

    Over Half of News Stories are Spin

    by Anne Landman — March 19, 2010 - 12:33am

    Independent journalists in Australia studied 2,203 news stories in ten different hard-copy Australian newspapers over a five day work week and found that nearly 55 percent of the stories analyzed were driven by some form of public relations. The most extreme paper was the Daily Telegraph, in which 70% of stories were triggered by some form of PR. The Sydney Morning Herald was the best at "only" 42 percent PR-driven stories.

    Main Source: 
    Crikey.com.au, March 15, 2010

    Judge Carey Approves Trib's Bankster-Style Bonuses

    by Lisa Graves — January 30, 2010 - 4:17pm
  • Topics: Journalism

    • We recently flagged that the Tribune Company was proposing bankster-style bonuses to its execs while cutting reporting and other staff. Despite the strong objections of employees and their union reps, a federal bankruptcy court judge, Kevin J. Carey, approved paying bonuses totaling $45,000,000 to executives at the media company.

    Journalists Hooked on Same Health Care Sources, Such as Jonathan Gruber

    by John Stauber — January 29, 2010 - 1:03pm

    Trudy Lieberman of the Columbia Journalism Review writes, "Jonathan Gruber is an economist from MIT. Jonathan Oberlander is a political scientist from the University of North Carolina. Both are health policy experts and, from what we can tell, both know their stuff. But the press has counted on Gruber rather than Oberlander to give gravitas to their stories.

    Main Source: 
    Columbia Journalism Review, January 28, 2010

    Tribune Plans Millions in Exec Bonuses while Reporting Gets Cut

    by Lisa Graves — January 25, 2010 - 1:45pm
  • Topics: Journalism

    • A U.S. federal bankruptcy court is expected to rule this week on whether the bankrupt Tribune media company can pay its executives big bonuses despite the cuts to its reporting staff. According to Business Insider, the Tribune is seeking to pay out over $45 million to its executives (down from $70 million this summer). The Tribune company probably owns a paper near you: the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, Sun Sentinel (South Florida), Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant, Morning Call and Daily Press and 23 TV stations and more.

    Talk about bankster envy! What's a failing media conglomerate that has slashed staff and frozen salaries doing giving such golden parachutes to management, while ad revenues plummet? It must be hard for the top dogs to take a critical look at the big bankster bonuses when they are pressing hard to line their own wallets. I must confess that I do have a bias, having seen some great investigative reporters I know laid off by the Tribune's "cost-saving" measures, which apparently do not including saving millions of dollars at the top.

    Will WaPo Outsource Health Reform Analysis to Fiscal Times?

    by Lisa Graves — January 11, 2010 - 12:10pm
  • Topics: Journalism, Health

    • A closer look at the Washington Post's new "partnership" with the Peter G. Peterson-funded Fiscal Times raises even more questions.

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