Posts Tagged ‘journalism’

In the US, journalists are sacrificing editorial independence in exchange for access to top politicians. The practice has a long history in Germany, where interviews often must be authorized before publication.

In democratic societies, the media has long struggled with the political class to define what information is fit to print. While journalists seek access to high-level officials for a scoop, officialdom often does its best to control the flow of information to journalists in order to mold public opinion in its interests.

Read more by Spencer Kimball at Deutsche Welle

Important article from the NY Times demonstrating how real journalism covering the criminal political elite in America is basically dead.  Even better, is Glenn Greenwald’s article at Salon slamming the complete joke that is the mainstream media, and he shows us all exactly why alternative media is taking over.  After all, only an incredible 21% of Americans have confidence in television news, a new low according to a recent Gallup poll.

Read more at LibertyBlitzkrieg.com

You don’t interrupt the president.

So goes the media narrative in the wake of the media hysteria surrounding the Daily Caller’s Neil Munro and his so-called “heckling” of President Obama.

Yeah, right. This is bunk.

A pluperfect illustration of a double-standard, as was illustrated in this space yesterday with a video clip of the White House press corps not only interrupting then-President Ronald Reagan as he read a statement but then shouting and shrieking at him as he left the room.

But is there more than meets the eye in this dust-up over Mr. Munro? (Munro, by the way, a longtime professional who formerly reported for the respected National Journal has answered his critics here stating the obvious — he had no intention of interrupting the President but simply thought the President had finished his statement.)

Yes. There is more here. A lot more. None of it pretty.

Someone needs to say this: There is a culture of corruption in the media world that is the White House press corps.

Read more by Jeffrey Lord at American Spectator

The publisher of The Post-Crescent of Appleton has written an open letter to readers apologizing for 25 Gannett Wisconsin Media journalists who signed petitions calling for the ouster of Republican Governor Scott Walker.

In a column published Saturday, Genia Lovett says it’s little consolation that none of the employees is involved with directing or reporting political-news coverage.

She says the newspaper is in the process of addressing discipline, and that it revealed the signatures in the interest of being as open as possible.

Read more by The Associated Press via 620WTMJ.com

In December a Federal District Judge, Marco Hernandez, ruled against blogger Crystal Cox who was being sued for defamation by attorney Kevin Padrick, whom Cox accused of corruption on her blog. The ruling declared that as a blogger, Cox was not a journalist and cannot claim the protections afforded to mainstream reporters and news. I happen to agree with his decision, but the case raises the question about what actually defines a journalist. Considering what the mainstream media represents today, the line between genuine reportage and political advocacy has been completely blurred.

–SNIP– Advocacy journalism intentionally and transparently adopts a non-objective viewpoint for either a political or social agenda and has morphed today into nothing less than media bias and propaganda. Today the mainstream media is predominantly composed of liberal democrats, and this bias has been quite evident since the 2008 presidential race. There is also a marked difference between opinion and reportage journalism.

Read more by Alicia Colon at bigjournalism.com

The media’s silence on the March for Life

My hopes for a Time magazine spread about the March for Life protesters are fading fast. For the fifth year in a row, The New York Times ignored the March for Life, which drew at least a hundred thousand participants in D.C. alone. NewsBusters reports:

For the fifth year in a row, there was no story in the Times print edition on the annual March for Life against abortion in Washington, D.C., which every year draws massive crowds in unpromising weather on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing abortion. …

As Times Watch reported last January, the 2011 print edition of the Times did not feature an actual news story of the thousands who marched in frigid weather, just two photos with the caption “Abortion Opponents Rally On the National Mall,” above a three-sentence description that led to a link to photographs online. That was actually a vast improvement; the Times in print absolutely ignored the March for Life in 2010, 2009, and 2008 (a 300-word story marked the 2007 March for Life on January 23 of that year).

The Times is far more eager to publicize protests in support of liberal causes, no matter how puny. When four protesters marched in support of the doomed Dream Act to grant amnesty to illegal immigrant students, the Times marked the occasion with a 780-word story.

Read more by Tina Korbe at HotAir.com

:

Scott wrote this morning about the absurdity of Republican debates being moderated by liberal activists like George Stephanopoulos and David Gregory, who, as Scott put it, are “on a mission to take down the candidates by making them appear crazy or by separating them from the base of the Republican Party.” But that is just stage one of the liberal press’s effort to control the presidential election cycle. Stage two comes when Democratic Party activists posing as journalists report on the proceedings.

Read more by John Hinderaker at PowerLineBlog.com

Why do we let (journalists?) with a known bias “moderate” these debates?