At a mandatory-attendance office party celebrating his first year as publisher, the Daytona Beach News Journal’s Michael Redding announced a new idea over marble cake and fruit: The paper’s newsroom staff, including reporters and editors, should also start selling advertising and subscriptions (Flagler Live, 3/31/11). Redding offered incentives to staffers who haven’t had a raise in four years: a $25 bonus for selling a three-month subscription, $50 for selling $100 worth of ads. This bold contempt for the idea that journalists should be insulated against the explicitly profit-motivated side of media is every day more prevalent. For every journalist who [...]
Search Results for: Paul Singer
Nov
19
2010
Wenonah Hauter on GE salmon, Rose Aguilar on Native Americans
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The FDA is on the verge of approving genetically engineered salmon in spite of opposition by the public, scientists and consumer groups. On November 15 the group Food & Water Watch released internal documents from Fish & Wildlife Service scientists expressing misgivings about the safety of the altered salmon and the legality of the FDA's procedures. We'll talk to Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of Food & Water Watch. Also on the show: A one-minute commentary by a cable TV host brought a swell of public awareness, political attention and money to a snowstorm-devastated [...]
May
01
2007
Bono, I Presume?
Covering Africa Through Celebrities
By Julie Hollar
"Africa is sexy and people need to know that,” declared U2 singer Bono (New York Times, 3/5/07), promoting his new (RED) line of products that propose to save Africa one iPod at a time. Celebrity interest in Africa is not particularly new, but today more stars than ever seem to be converging upon the continent, with television crews seldom far behind. But, as Bono clearly understands, what media tend to find sexy about Africa is not Africa itself, but the stars like himself who have taken up causes in the region. In television news in particular, with its typically cursory [...]
Jun
01
2005
Defeated by Democracy
Reported as triumph, Iraq elections were really Bush team’s nightmare
In the months before the January 30, 2005 elections in Iraq, gloom and dissension began creeping into the media’s usual cheerleading for the war. Casualties were mounting, Iraqi resentment was growing, and the Army was facing an alarming shortage of manpower. In a December column (12/27/04), Washington Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt—a staunch supporter of the invasion—lamented “the deteriorating conditions in Iraq” and warned that “the insurgents . . . are succeeding.” But with the impressive outpouring of Iraqi enthusiasm over the January 30 elections, the “purple revolution,” captured on film and broadcast around the world, caused a sea change [...]
Nov
01
2003
How the New York Times Blew My Lai
What if a massacre had been covered when it mattered?
By John L. Hess
"I was in Paris with a delightful, interesting man who works for the Times, John Hess. John was in the Paris bureau, and hewas one of the people who sort of straightened me out about Vietnam. He bugged me about it and told me I had to learn more--and I did. --New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, interviewed in Harvard Magazine (11/76) It gave me a lift to learn that Tony Lewis thought I helped straighten him out on Vietnam, but I fear he flattered us both. I never did quite straighten him out, or persuade him to share my [...]
Sep
01
2003
Weeding the Field
Press tries to determine who should and shouldn't run for president
Ten years ago, political science professor Thomas Patterson argued in his book Out of Order that the "road to nomination" for potential U.S. presidential candidates "now runs through the newsrooms." In particular, he asserted, "the press performs the party's traditional role of screening potential nominees for the presidency--deciding which ones are worthy of serious consideration by the electorate and which ones can be dismissed as also-rans." In addition, he proposed, journalists choose a "prevailing story line" around which news about candidates is framed. Patterson's observations aptly describe current media coverage of the nine Democratic candidates for their party's nomination. Some, [...]
Aug
01
2001
Questions for Kissinger Go Unasked
Journalists show 'sensitivity' to war-crime suspect’s feelings
By Peter Hart
While visiting Paris in May, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger received a summons to appear at the French Palace of Justice to answer questions about murders and disappearances in Chile in the 1970s. While the story was carried by major European news outlets, it has received relatively little coverage in U.S. media. The French wanted to ask Kissinger what he knew about Operation Condor, a consortium of Latin American governments that assassinated dissidents in each other’s countries. Evidence that the U.S. government supported Operation Condor has been available for years (Nation, 8/9-16/99; New York Times, 3/6/01). The French magistrate [...]
Jul
01
2001
The Most Biased Name in News
Fox News Channel's extraordinary right-wing tilt
"I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News Channel."--Rupert Murdoch (Salon, 3/1/01) Years ago, Republican party chair Rich Bond explained that conservatives' frequent denunciations of "liberal bias" in the media were part of "a strategy" (Washington Post, 8/20/92). Comparing journalists to referees in a sports match, Bond explained: "If you watch any great coach, what they try to do is 'work the refs.' Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack next time." But when Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch's 24-hour cable network, debuted in 1996, a curious thing happened: Instead of denouncing it, [...]
