Sunday, December 28, 2014
By ALANA SHILLING-JANOFF.
NOVEMBER 24, 2014, marked the 100th year of The New Republic, a venerable American magazine that wore the contemptuous epithets by conservatives as a “liberal rag” like a badge of honor. The publication was a forum for discussion of politics, policy and the arts. More broadly, The New Republic was a place where ideas—new, old, and contested—could be articulated. Legitimacy was conferred on the publication even before the appearance of the first issue; it was the subject of discussion at former president Theodore Roosevelt’s Long Island estate (an auspicious setting for a magazine that would engage in political debate with a formidable tenacity). Continue reading “The New Republic at 100.” »
PEW RESEARCH CENTER for the People & the Press [Pew Summary] – For the second time in a decade, the believability ratings for major news organizations have suffered broad-based declines. In the new survey, positive believability ratings have fallen significantly for nine of 13 news organizations tested. This follows a similar downturn in positive believability ratings that occurred between 2002 and 2004.
The falloff in credibility affects news organizations in most sectors: national newspapers, such as the New York Times and USA Today, all three cable news outlets, as well as the broadcast 
TV networks and NPR.
Across all 13 news organizations included in the survey, the average positive believability rating (3 or 4 on a 4-point scale) is 56%. In 2010, the average positive rating was 62%. A decade ago, the average rating for the news organizations tested was 71%. Since 2002, every news outlet’s believability rating has suffered a double-digit drop, except for local daily newspapers and local TV news. The New York Times was not included in this survey until 2004, but its believability rating has fallen by 13 points since then.
Continued at The Pew Center | More Chronicle & Notices.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
By Helen Hunt Jackson.
Irene.
PHYSICIANS TELL US THAT there is no known disease, no known symptom of disease, which hysteria cannot and does not counterfeit. Most skilful surgeons are misled by its cunning into believing and pronouncing able-bodied young women to be victims of spinal disease, “stricture of the œsophagus,” “gastrodynia,” “paraplegia,” “hemiplegia,” and hundreds of other affections, with longer or shorter names. Families are thrown into disorder and distress; friends suffer untold pains of anxiety and sympathy; doctors are summoned from far and near; and all this while the vertebra, or the membrane, or the muscle, as it may be, which is so honestly believed to be diseased, and which shows every symptom of diseased action or inaction, is sound and strong, and as well able as ever it was to perform its function.
Continue reading “• Pouring cold water on media hysteria.” »
By BRENDAN O’NEILL [Spiked] – The notion that the cultural harrying of Murdoch has made British politicians ‘free at last’ – thank God almighty, free at last! – is based on two problematic ideas. First, that British politics was, until last week, dominated by Murdoch. And second, that the muddying of Murdoch’s name will allow our politicians finally to speak honestly and with conviction once more. Neither of these things is true. The fact that so many commentators believe they are reveals a great deal about the parlous state of public debate.
Continue reading “· The media’s Murdoch-mania and the madness of editors.” »
By RICHARD NORTHEDGE [Director of Finance Online] – How could part of an international publishing organisation hack into the phone of schoolgirl Millie Dowler? Easily – and justifying the ethics was even easier than mastering the technology. Despite the outcry now we know she was murdered, there is no clear moral code of what newspapers can do.
The consequences of the News of the World’s hacking are now commercial with Ford leading an advertisers’ boycott, executive heads likely to roll and News International’s bid for BSkyB in danger. Continue reading “· What would Wikileaks do with a murdered schoolgirl’s personal messages?” »
ONE THING LAW ENFORCEMENT agencies, especially in America, cannot resist is premature triumphalism. In this, the press is an eager accomplice. In big cities, such as New York, it’s the infamous ‘perp walk’, a melodramatic collaboration of the police department and the press to parade an arrested person before the cameras to show the law got its man. The media stampede is on – followed, after many months, by the selection of a jury who has seen the perp do his walk hundreds of times. In federal cases, the theatrics are more nuanced and suspenseful. The FBI leaks information about a ‘person of interest’ to the media. Reporters then hound a person who hasn’t even been arrested. In almost every case, the law is degraded and the press further despised, whether or not the alleged perp is guilty or innocent.
By CHARLEMAGNE [The Economist] – Perhaps inevitably, given the fame of Mr Strauss-Kahn and the anonymity of the chambermaid, more attention has been paid to the tribulations of the former IMF chief than to the plight of his alleged victim. Indeed, the images of Mr Strauss-Kahn in handcuffs during his “perp walk” are regarded by many in France as an assault on the defendant’s dignity, part of a flawed system of justice that places too much emphasis on retribution at the expense of the rights of the accused. Continue reading “· Following the media on a ‘walk of shame’.” »
By STEVEN LAGERFELD [Wilson Quarterly] – So let me introduce myself. I am a wristwatch. Or, more accurately, a wristwatch maker. Okay, so I’m really the editor of a print magazine—the media world’s equivalent of a wristwatch.
Now, if you’re a wristwatch-maker and cell phones come along, you have some choices to make. You could go into the cell phone business. But that doesn’t seem like a very good idea. Or you could drastically reduce the quality and price of your watches—dumb them down—in order to sell more of them. Also not a good idea. Actually, it looks like it’s really not such a bad thing to be a Rolex in a cell phone world. A fancy watch isn’t just a device for telling time. But I don’t think I’d want to be a mass-market watch, like Timex.
Continue reading “· A ticking metaphor taped to an editor! Stand back. Way back.” »
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
By ANDREW FERGUSON [Commentary] – Tweets appear in the order they’re received, so I was able to work my way down my “timeline” to see what my Twitter comrades had been up to through the week. Here at the top was a tweet sent only seconds before from Michele Norris, the NPR host. “Chicago is so majestic,” she wrote. I was drawn up short. Chicago? Michele is in Chicago? I should mention that I don’t know Michele Norris. Continue reading “Why did NPR’s Michele Norris stop to tweet instead of running for the plane?” »
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
By PETER STOTHARD [The Times] – Just as a butcher should have the best of Christmas turkeys, and the fireman’s house deserves especially dutiful attention in a fire, the Obituaries Editor of a newspaper has to be sent off in style.
Exactly thus, and very stylishly indeed, came the story of Tony Howard’s life in The Times today (available to on-line subscribers and surely worth the charge in itself), a piece which the great man would have approved, honest, accurate, elegantly balanced between the goods and bads, ups and downs, failures and successes of our trade.
Continue reading “An obol for the obituary man.” »
