NewsTrust - Most Recent Stories

Iraq & Afghan Wars: Just Give Me Some Truth

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - When it came to the war in Iraq, “I should have been the canary in the coal mine,” Alissa Rubin wrote this week in the New York Times. “But like so many others around me, I did not want to believe what I saw.”

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Will Mainstream Media Journalists Fail on Afghanistan War the Way They Did on Iraq?

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Oct. 21 (Opinion) - The “’forgotten war’ in Afghanistan, as news outlets once called it, is suddenly very visible. NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel – who made his name covering the war in Iraq – put it well when he spoke to the New York Times from Kabul this week: “It’s like the Baghdad class of 2003 is now the Kabul class of 2009.

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NFL to Rush Limbaugh: You’re a Dead Man Talking!

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Oct. 15 (Opinion) - It was obvious from the start that Rush Limbaugh’s bid to buy into the NFL was doomed. But why do NFL owners hold themselves to higher standards than the rest of us?

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Just Say Yes Men

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Sep. 21 (Opinion) - The Yes Men’s latest elaborate media hoax/heist blanketed Manhattan early Monday morning with a fake “truth-telling tabloid” about climate change and how it will soon affect New York City – and the rest of the world…

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Network News Chiefs: The Future's So Bright

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

- By Rory O'Connor - Sep. 11 (Opinion) - While celebrating Murrow and citing Cronkite, network news chiefs remain in deep denial about "meeting the industry's challenges."

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Happy 40th Birthday, Mr. Internet!

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - Sep. 02 (Opinion) - Its relative initial obscurity was key to the success and adoption of the Internet, as experimentation was readily fostered and the ideal of an open network became a reality. But with more than a billion people now online, a few caveats (at least) are in order

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Join the Journalism Clubs -- "Members Only"

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Aug. 26 (Opinion) - Desperate to stay alive, beleaguered newspaper executives first tried to “monetize” their “content.” Now they’re desperately trying to “monetize” their “journalists.”

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Your Message Here: Salons, Sponsors, Pay-to-Play & Journalism

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Jul. 14 (Opinion) - if, like so many others, you are currently ‘consuming’ most of your media diet at low-or-no cost, while operating under the notorious Internet dictum that “Information wants to be free,” should you really be quick to criticize the beleagured poor publisher of The Washington Post for sponsoring salons in hopes of keeping the doors open and the news flowing?

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Personal Democracy

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Jun. 30 (Other) - With half of the members of Congress now running their own YouTube Channel, and many of the rest Twittering their time away, no one questions any longer the primacy of the Internet and its attendant technologies. Instead, attention is now shifting toward how best to use these emerging media — and the social networks that power them — to transform the body politic in ways that are actually useful and meaningful to ‘ordinary’ citizens like you and me.

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Censoring Pro-Palestinian Political Messages?

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Jun. 17 (Opinion) - Was it policy or pressure that led Lamar Outdoor Advertising to tear down billboards featuring a pro-Palestinian political message? Judge for yourself.

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Patrick Fitzgerald\'s Private Jihad Against Peter Lance\'s Triple Cross

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Jun. 10 (Opinion) - "To put it plain and simple,” Fitzgerald wrote, “if in fact you publish the book this month and it defames me or casts me in a false light, HarperCollins will be sued.”

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Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz -- How MSNBC Became a Liberal Mecca

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Jun. 01 (Opinion) - Despite the startling success of Maddow and the recent addition of Schultz to an increasingly liberal lineup that also includes MSNBC’s first breakout star Keith Olbermann, getting anyone other than on-air talent like Schultz and Maddow to admit the obvious — that the rising cable net is in the process of re-branding itself as the left-winged equivalent of right-leaning industry leader Fox News – can be difficult.

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Prairie Home Torture Companion

Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - May. 20 (Opinion) - “I think the American electorate knew who they re-elected in 2004,” Keillor helpfully points out. “ Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney did not run on a human-rights platform, they ran as rough men who would guard our sleep. So go talk to the voters of Ohio about war crimes.”

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Media Torture

Tue, 12 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - May. 12 (Opinion) - After all, defending torture — and the torturers — is now a long accepted practice in American journalism, one that brings you much acclaim and access to power, bylines, headlines, prestigious awards, and lucrative contracts. Plus there are all the reader benefits to consider as well!

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Babes in TortureLand

Tue, 05 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - May. 05 (Opinion) - "If the president does it, that means it's not illegal."

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Time to Think About Torture

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Apr. 29 (Opinion) - Of course, “We can’t legalize physical torture,” Alter opined, as “It’s contrary to American values.” Still, “we need to keep an open mind” about other torturous measures – “and we’ll have to think about transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies, even if that’s hypocritical. Nobody said this was going to be pretty.”

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Times to Globe: It’s hard out here for a pimp!

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Apr. 09 (Opinion) - "From the moment The Times Co. purchased The Globe in 1993 it has treated New England’s largest newspaper like a cheap whore."

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The Daily We

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - Mar. 25 (Special Report) - The conventional wisdom about social networks is that people filter out dissonant news and opinions, and instead flood themselves with news and views that merely confirm their prejudices. But new evidence suggests that in seeking information online, just the opposite happens. Many people are already using new media tools as trust filters in a truly sophisticated way.

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Why Brands Can’t Be Trusted

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Mar. 19 (Special Report) - Internet users put considerable trust in search engines as the online equivalent of traditional gatekeepers. But most are not even aware that sponsors pay for their links or that most search engines do no verification whatsoever of the information links they offer.

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Brands, Cesspools and Credibility

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Mar. 10 (Special Report) - Google CEO Eric Schmidt believes the Internet is a “cesspool” of false information, and that filters are needed to help sort through the muck and mire... Predictably, corporate executives like Schmidt offer their corporate “brands” as the answer. “Brands are the solution, not the problem,” Schmidt told a collection of top American magazine editors last fall. “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”

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Public Displays of Connection

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Mar. 04 (Special Report) - A still-growing body of academic research supports the notion that online networks (such as Facebook or Slashdot, to name just two) actually make finding and sharing credible news and information more possible than it was in the previous era of legacy media.

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The New Breed of New Media Researchers

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Feb. 24 (Special Report) - He says that unlike face-to-face, ‘offline’ social networks, online social networks lend themselves to easy group formation. The resultant looser, more extensive social ties then lead to more diverse, and ultimately more trustworthy and credible news and information delivery.

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Embedded Business Press Misses Story of the Century

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Feb. 18 (Opinion) - Just as our mainstream news reporters failed to do their job in alerting us an impending and fairly obvious disaster prior to the war in Iraq – and then ‘embedded’ themselves with the very people they were supposedly reporting on during the invasion and subsequent occupation — so too did our complaisant business press

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Web 3.0: Apture

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Jan. 28 (Review) - The dream of the so-called ‘ semantic Web’ is to use ‘smart programs’ to tag and link to information across media while providing context and depth to stories without human intervention. Such a deep “Web 3.0” experience is said to be just a vision on the horizon, still years away from becoming a reality. But the future is now...

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Twitter Journalism

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Media is a Plural - By Rory O'Connor - Jan. 19 (Interview) - The first report of the miraculous rescue of 150 passengers from a US Airways jet floating in the Hudson River also provided the latest evidence – if indeed it was still needed – that emerging social media are not only supplementing but supplanting the legacy mainstream media.

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