Search Results for: Mike Males

Sep
01
2008

Media's 'Girls Gone Wild' Fantasies

Pregnant girls ignored in story on ‘pregnancy pact’

Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/MestreechCity

When Time magazine (6/30/08; online edition, 6/19/08) reported that “nearly half” of 17 pregnant teenagers at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts had made a pact to have children simultaneously, corporate journalists latched onto the story and scurried to express their dismay on newspaper pages, blogs and 24-hour cable news. Time’s article, which reporter Kathleen Kingsbury largely sourced to school principal Joseph Sullivan, told of a group of girls who repeatedly visited the school clinic for pregnancy tests. The girls, according to the principal, “reacted to the news that they were expecting with high fives.” And “the story got worse,” Kingsbury [...]

Oct
01
2006

More Dangerous Than Anyone Thought

Driving data latest attack on ‘teen brains’

Earlier this year, I asked my undergraduate students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to evaluate a barrage of news stories declaring that “teen drivers are more dangerous than anyone thought” (Paula Zahn Now, 1/18/06) in response to an American Automobile Association study warning that crashes involving 15- to 17-year-old drivers killed 31,000 people over the last decade. Within minutes, the students, ages 19-21, formulated three obvious questions reporters should have asked about the study: (1) Did the teen drivers “involved in” the crashes in the AAA study cause the crashes? (2) Why are teen drivers singled out, when [...]

May
01
2006

Letters to the Editor

In Defense of MEF I see that the March/April 2006 issue of Extra! has a letter to the editor from Mike Males in response to my piece on FAIR and media reform published in the January/February 2006 Extra!. Males’ letter has nothing to do with my article, and tees off on a passing reference I made to the Media Education Foundation in which I praised the quality of MEF’s work. As Males acknowledges, MEF does tremendous work. It is one of the truly great progressive institutions in our society, much like FAIR. But Males uses my passing reference to make [...]

Mar
01
2006

Letters to the Editor

Anniversary Wishes Kudos on your 20th anniversary issue of Extra!, and thanks for all I have learned and benefited from. Best wishes for the next 20 years or until there is a free press doing its job in the USA. (If there was one thing missing in the issue, it might have been mention of Fred J. Cook, one of my favorite muckrakers.) Bob Goldberg Jericho, N.Y. . Thank you for the wonderful review of those 20 very important stories and how the media handled them. We need to have such reminders. Leonore Johnson Toledo, OH . I wish you [...]

Dec
01
2005

Failing at Its 'No. 1 Goal'

Lack of balance at C-SPAN’s Washington Journal

Since 1979, C-SPAN has provided an invaluable service to viewers with its no-frills coverage of congressional hearings, press briefings, demonstrations, book readings and other political events. By presenting public affairs with a minimal intrusion by hosts or reporters, C-SPAN has gained a reputation as a frictionless conveyer of raw political information to the public. In 2005, C-SPAN celebrated the 25th anniversary of the first-ever nationally televised viewer call-in shows, a format that it introduced in October 1980. By January 1995, it launched Washington Journal, a political talkshow that C-SPAN now describes as its “flagship viewer call-in program.” Airing seven mornings [...]

Jan
01
2004

With Friends Like These

Black youth stereotyped by progressive columnist Bob Herbert

Black Americans are "insane," "predators," "running wild," "killing each other," perpetrating "self-destructive sexual behavior and drug use," and in need of "thundering" condemnations from leaders to halt their culture-driven recklessness. A vicious attack by far-right, race-baiting commentators like Michael Savage or Ann Coulter? No, these are routine disparagements by the New York Times' well-respected, progressive African-American columnist Bob Herbert, selectively criticizing "young black men and women." For example, Herbert (6/12/03) blamed Los Angeles' recent murder epidemic on "kids who are running wild and frequently killing one another". He declared (10/17/03) that the "Ghettopoly" game, a Monopoly parody widely deplored as [...]

Nov
01
2000

Raving Junk

Few outlets dissent from the latest teen-drug hysterias

1980: The Washington Post's front-page profile (9/28/80) of "Jimmy," a black eight-year-old junkie, ignited pandemonium. Mayor Marion Barry ordered police and teachers to inspect children's arms for needle holes. Despite a $10,000 reward and intensive searches, neither Jimmy nor any other child addict was found. "Jimmy" did not exist, Post reporter Janet Cooke later confessed. 1996: Trainspotting panic erupted. In a story that would shame the National Enquirer, USA Today (7/19/96) declared "smoking or snorting smack is as commonplace as beer for the younger generation." Rolling Stone (5/30/96) branded Seattle "junkie town." Citing anecdotes, the article blamed Seattle's tripling in [...]

Jan
01
1999

Drive-By Journalism

Rolling Stone's glam-crime reports misrepresent young people--and America's violence problem

Other than ultra-quotable crime experts such as Princeton's John ("adolescent superpredator") DiIulio and Northeastern University's James Alan ("teenage crime storm") Fox, few individuals have contributed more to the inflammatory and systematic misportrayal of teenage crime in American than Rolling Stone magazine's contributing editor Randall Sullivan. Sullivan's fact-lite, anecdote-laden style specialized in blowing up extremely rare, bizarre murders by a few upscale kids into an unwarranted image of modern teenagers as "the most damaged and disturbed generation the country has ever produced" (Rolling Stone, 10/1/98). His language was panicked ("how truly and terribly lost we are"--9/17/98), his evidence lacking, his perspective [...]

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