Journalism

David Brock, founder of the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America, has written a letter urging Creators Syndicate to dump Samuel Francis, the columnist who condemned interracial relationships as abnormal and immoral: We strongly condemn the clear bigotry in this column and assume that newspaper editors across the country feel the same way, as a search of newspapers available on Nexis revealed that none have chosen to run the column. Regardless, Creators' willingness to distribute ... (read more)

2004/12/07

Are You Ready for Some Race Mixing?

Samuel Francis, a newspaper columnist distributed by Creators Syndicate, believes the Terrell Owens/Nicolette Sheridan skit on Monday Night Football was an insidious effort to promote interracial sex: If only morals and taste had been the targets, the producers could easily have found white actresses who are less obviously Nordic than the golden-locked Sheridan, but Nordic is what the ad's producers no doubt wanted. For that matter, if you only wanted to take a swipe at morals and taste, you ... (read more)

2004/12/04

CNN Report: We Suck

A front-page story on CNN.Com today derides cable news networks for dumping serious news coverage in favor of talk and fluff, reserving special criticism for CNN: The notion that people can work late, skip the broadcast evening news and catch up later on cable isn't necessarily true. Try to find a serious newscast on these networks in prime time, at least before Aaron Brown on CNN at 10 p.m. Eastern time, and you'll be out of luck. Even CNN Headline News -- a dependable network that rotates ... (read more)

2004/11/30

Dying to Cover the Iraq War

Knight-Ridder Baghdad bureau chief Hannah Allam has penned a bloglike first-person piece on what it's like to report from Iraq: My 26th birthday party was perfect. Stars glittered over the Baghdad hotel where I blew out the candles on a cake decorated by my four closest Iraqi friends. We stayed up until the dawn call to prayer rang from a nearby mosque, telling stories and debating the future of a country I'd grown to cherish. A year later, only one of those friends is still alive. The poolside ... (read more)

2004/11/18

Internet Bites CBS Journalist

CBS News correspondent Eric Engberg comes out of retirement to lay an old-school hurting on webloggers for releasing exit poll numbers, causing John Kerry's seven-hour presidency (sniffle): While out on the campaign trail covering candidates, my own network's political unit would not even give me exit poll information on election days because it was thought to be too tricky for a common reporter to comprehend. If you are standing in the main election night studio when your network's polling ... (read more)

2004/11/08

When News Breaks, He Fixes It

John Ellis criticizes the exit polls that suggested a big Kerry win on Tuesday: The weirdest thing about Election Day 2004 was the seven or so hours, from roughly 1:30 p.m. to roughly 9 p.m. when Big Media's story-line was based upon fiction. Kerry never led Bush nationally by 4 points. He was never ever close in any Southern state save Florida (and he lost that by 5). Colorado wasn't close. Virginia wasn't close. Kerry never led Bush by double-digits in Pennsylvania. Everything that was hinted ... (read more)

2004/11/05

Weblogger, Love Thyself

The New York Times asked several webloggers today to identify the most important moment in the 2004 presidential campaign. I love the answer given by attorneys John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson, publishers of Power Line: The most important event of the campaign was the exposure of documents cited by 60 Minutes in its report on President Bush's Air National Guard service as fraudulent. We participated in this exposure by asking our readers for information relevant to the documents' authenticity, ... (read more)

2004/11/02

Thou Shalt Not Anger The Times

Today's New York Times includes a letter I wrote to ombudsman Daniel Okrent about his decision to out a reader who sent a violently hostile e-mail to political reporter Adam Nagourney: I was disappointed by your decision to reveal the name of the offensive e-mail correspondent. The easiest thing for any newspaper columnist to do is to quote his most abusive critics. It's a win-win: no one would be persuaded by the person's horrendous comments, and it builds sympathy for the columnist. On the ... (read more)

2004/10/24

AP Reporter Fabricates 45 Sources

The Associated Press has issued a huge correction after one of its reporters, Christopher Newton, quoted more than 45 fictitious sources in his stories. Newton was incredibly brazen, making up numerous professors, researchers, and public policy organizations. Some of the sources were placed at real institutions such as the University of Texas, the National Organization for Women, and Consumer Reports magazine, but he wasn't caught for several years. Matt Drudge got away with something similar ... (read more)

2002/10/24