Do Respectable Journalists Want to Be Associated With Bill Keller?
A Daily Beast piece wonders whether journalists don’t want to work with Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald because they’re very critical of corporate journalism.
What It Takes to Get a Reporter to Correct An Error
When Jeremy Scahill called out a CNN reporter for an error, she eventually corrected her mistake on the air. That’s good– and more outlets should be doing the same. Unfortunately the “non-correction correction” is more typical–or, as in the case of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, a media figure will simply ignore the issue.
Why Is It Hard to Believe President Obama Would Want a Journalist in Prison?
Jeremy Scahill’s piece at the Nation website (“Why Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen?,” 3/13/12) about imprisoned Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye is riveting and deeply reported. But to Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum, the story doesn’t quite add up…because Barack Obama seems like a decent guy. As Scahill reports, Shaye […]
Meet the Other Chuck Todd
I caught this MSNBC commercial last night featuring their own Chuck Todd, explaining (apparently) how he thinks about his job: My job is to bring up issues that Americans care about. It’s my responsibility to ask the tough questions. No matter who’s leading the country, they need to be held accountable. I have unique access […]
WashPost Sheds Light on Secret Government–but Alt Media Were There First
The Washington Post‘s blockbuster story (7/19/10) by reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin on the bloated, secretive and largely privatized national security apparatus established after the September 11, 2001, attacks is making a lot of noise, and for good reason. The Post describes a “top-secret world” that has become “so large, so unwieldy and so […]
Chuck Todd, Meet Jeremy Scahill
Independent journalist Jeremy Scahill (The Nation, Democracy Now!) appeared on HBO‘s Real Time With Bill Maher alongside NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd. Because Jeremy isn’t the type to let such an opportunity to go to waste, he used some of his time to castigate the corporate media for failing to question the White House […]
U.S. Paramilitary Murder Doesn’t Rate on NPR
National Public Radio monitor mytwords (NPR Check, 8/9/09) has observed what he dubs a “Blackwater Blackout” on the publicly funded “alternative” to corporate radio: On Tuesday, August 4 Jeremy Scahill broke the story about two sworn statements implicating Blackwater (now Xe) founder Erik Prince in the murder of employees or former employees who were cooperating […]
Press Freedom ‘Lip Service’ vs. ‘de Facto U.S. Policy’
Reporting that “the Obama administration has recently paid a lot of lip service to freedom of the press, particularly around the case of Iranian-American journalist Roxanna Saberi, who was released May 11 from an Iranian prison,” Jeremy Scahill asks (Rebel Reports, 5/26/09) the simple question, “If Iran Freed Roxanna Saberi, Why Won’t the U.S. Release […]
Media Unconcerned with Real Torturers Still at Gitmo
Amy Goodman recently interviewed independent journalist Jeremy Scahill on her Democracy Now! show (5/19/09) regarding the fact that, in Scahill’s words, “while much of the focus has been on the tactical use of torture at Guantanamo, almost no attention had been paid to a parallel force” known as the Immediate Reaction Force. Describing the methods […]
NYT Rewrites Iraq War History
In a September 5 New York Times online article on George W. Bush’s speech that day on terrorism and Iraq, reporters David Sanger and John O’Neil included a striking revision of Bush’s reasoning for going to war: “The possibility that Saddam Hussein might develop “weapons of mass destruction” and pass them to terrorists was the […]
Media Rush to Declare Winner in Florida–Again
On February 26, the Miami Herald and USA Today published the results of the papers’ re-examination of the presidential election ballots from Miami-Dade County. They found that the uncounted “undervotes”–ballots that registered no choice when read electronically–produced a net gain of only 49 votes for Al Gore, less than had been expected. Combined with official […]
Protesters Rain on ABC’s Parade
Unlike the New York Times, broadcast outlets did not have the luxury of banishing the protesters at George W. Bush’s inauguration to the back pages. As Bush’s limousine was booed in real time, some of the protests couldn’t help but make it onto TV–to the obvious discomfort of the on-air personnel. Take ABC News, whose […]
