Posts under ‘Issues’

Arianna Huffington: Lesson Learned. At the beginning of the week, I was so focused on making it crystal clear that we did indeed have permission to run the Clooney blog that I was blinded to another extremely important issue: that a blog, where the source of the material is not clear, diminishes the amazing work […]

Slate’s Jack Shafer shreds “Judith Miller’s New Excuse” for her well-deserved comeuppance, in which she blames bloggers for (in her view) unfairly tarring her shabby (my word) journalism in the run-up to the Iraq war. Note: Miller’s former boss, Bill Keller, all but calls her a liar in the Esquire piece Shafer cites. And Shafer […]

NY Times: TV Stations Fined Over CBS Show Deemed to Be Indecent. The Federal Communications Commission leveled a record $3.6 million fine yesterday against 111 television stations that broadcast an episode of “Without a Trace” in December 2004, with the agency saying the CBS show suggested that its teenage characters were participating in a sexual […]

UPDATED NY Times: Wal-Mart Enlists Bloggers in Its Public Relations Campaign. Under assault as never before, Wal-Mart is increasingly looking beyond the mainstream media and working directly with bloggers, feeding them exclusive nuggets of news, suggesting topics for postings and even inviting them to visit its corporate headquarters. But the strategy raises questions about what […]

George Will: Less Freedom, Less Speech. In 1989, in two speeches in Austria, Irving said, among much else, that only 74,000 Jews died of natural causes in work camps and millions were spirited to Palestine after the war. An arrest warrant was issued. Last November Irving was arrested when he came to Austria to address […]

New West Network: Denver Media Offering Politicos Free PR Outlet. In south metro communities, at least, several politicians — including the House Minority Leader and a couple of wannabes who hope to be ensconced in the Colorado Capitol after next fall’s election — have discovered that they can post whatever they like in “news stories” […]

William J. Bennett and Alan M. Dershowitz: A Failure of the Press. We two come from different political and philosophical perspectives, but on this we agree: Over the past few weeks, the press has betrayed not only its duties but its responsibilities. To our knowledge, only three print newspapers have followed their true calling: the […]

News organizations are beginning to fight back against the absurd and arrogant demands of sports leagues and entertainment conglomerates (often the same entities, in my view). As the Honolulu Star Bulletin notes today, it’s not publishing pictures from the pro golfing tournament being held in its backyard. “The organization wants control over all stories and […]

Washington Post Op-Ed columnist Colbert I. King raises a question that more and more people – readers and journalists alike – seem to be asking: who decides what’s newsworthy today? Interestingly, King came to address this issue thanks to feedback from a Post reader who wrote to the editor after the murder of Marion Fye, […]

My colleagues at the Berkman Center, Rebecca MacKinnon and John Palfrey, have penned an op-ed piece for Newsweek’s international edition called “Censorship Inc.” Takeaway: If we’re not careful, we may wake up one day to discover that what a person can see and do on the Web will be radically different depending on which country […]