NewsTrust - Ethics in Journalism - Most Recent Stories: News (Mainstream)

Danger lies in threat to Fed independence

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Alan Blinder - Nov. 19 (Special Report) - H.R. 1207 seems innocuous enough. The overall question it raises sounds fair: After all, why should the Fed be immune from audit?

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API's Partnership With Newsweek Raises Ad Cash and Ethics Questions

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Anne C. Mulkern - Nov. 05 (News Analysis) - Newsweek and API have teamed on four forums so far and are planning another -- "Climate and Energy Policy: Moving?" -- for Dec. 1, when the Senate could be holding a floor debate on climate legislation. An invitation sent yesterday to lawmakers' offices said Gerard again would be a panelist and that requests to speak were "currently pending confirmation with notable members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate." Lawmakers receiving invitations included Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

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Why Keep Geithner?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

MSNBC - By Dylan Ratigan - Nov. 02 (News Analysis) - A year ago it was revealed to the American people that our banking system was a legalized Ponzi scheme in which bank and insurance CEOs paid themselves billions of dollars in personal compensation to lend and insure assets with money they didn't have

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'Fairness' in talk radio

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Carol Costello - Oct. 22 (News Report) - CNN's Carol Costello looks at the idea of a "Fairness Doctrine," being pushed by some Democrats, for political talk radio.

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ACORN Loses Its Funding From Big Foundations

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Susan Kinzie - Oct. 02 (News Report) - The liberal political organizing group ACORN, battered by the release of embarrassing videos and allegations of financial mismanagement and fraud, has also been losing support from several major foundations

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The Story Behind the Story

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Mark Bowden - Sep. 09 (Special Report) - With journalists being laid off in droves, savvy political operatives have stepped eagerly into the breach. What’s most troubling is not that TV-news producers mistake their work for journalism, which is bad enough, but that young people drawn to journalism increasingly see no distinction between disinterested reporting and hit-jobbery. The very smart and capable young men (more on them in a moment) who actually dug up and initially posted the Sotomayor clips both originally described themselves to me as part-time, or aspiring, journalists.

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Cap-and-trade & Health Care & Insurance Reform I see these two issues as one and the same thing. The first one is to heal our planet, and the second is to heal our human bodies. Also, both issues have to deal with how the 'healing' is delievered and wh

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Foreign policy, EU news, climate, green technology, health. - Aug. 21 (Investigative Report) - Experts and politicians on whether health care reform will trump climate change.

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New Facebook iPhone App ’Pretty Much Done’

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By MG Siegler - Aug. 08 (News Report) - As one of the most popular applications on Apple’s popular iPhone platform, a lot of users are eagerly awaiting the next version of the app. And that wait is almost over.

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CNN Refusing To Run Health Care Ad Critical Of Insurance Industry

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

WhoRunsGov.com - By Greg Sargent - Aug. 05 (News) - Americans United for Change’s spokesman, Jeremy Funk, tells me that CNN refused to run the ad nationally. He says CNN emailed the following reason for rejection: “This ad does not comply with our clearance guidelines because it unnecessarily singles out an individual company and person.” That very well may be CNN’s policy. But AUC maintains that the mention of Cigna’s CEO was necessary to dramatize the enormous stake the insurance industry has in the health care wars. What’s more, AUC argues, the industry is made up of companies that are run by individuals deciding how to spend huge money to impact the health care debate — so why are they off limits?

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Deayton bug

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Financial Times - By Ben Fenton - Jul. 12 (News Report) - On another occasion, Mr Deayton became suspicious that information from private phone calls was appearing in newspapers, and an investigation found a bug inside a telephone junction box on the pavement near his London home.

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Crap Detection 101

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Howard Rheingold - Jul. 07 (Special Report) - The answer to almost any question is available within seconds, courtesy of the invention that has altered how we discover knowledge - the search engine. Materializing answers from the air turns out to be the easy part - the part a machine can do. The real difficulty kicks in when you click down into your search results. At that point, it's up to you to sort the accurate bits from the misinfo, disinfo, spam, scams, urban legends, and hoaxes. "Crap detection," as Hemingway called it half a century ago, is more important than ever before, now that the automation of crapcasting has generated its own word: "spamming." Unless a great many people learn the basics of online crap detection and begin applying their critical faculties en masse and very soon, I fear for the future of the Internet as a useful source of credible news, medical advice, financial information, educational resources, scholarly and scientific research. Some critics argue that a tsunami of hogwash has already rendered the Web useless. I disagree. We are indeed inundated by online noise pollution, but the problem is soluble. The good stuff is out there if you know how to find and verify it. Basic information literacy, widely distributed, is the best protection for the knowledge commons: A sufficient portion of critical consumers among the online population can become a strong defense against the noise-death of the Internet.

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Selling the Post Dinners

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Joshua Green - Jul. 04 (Special Report) - Mike Allen’s recent report on the controversial Washington Post lobbyist dinners has sparked a furor. One thing that’s been largely overlooked is the fact that the invitations to administration officials and members of Congress differed markedly from the “sponsorship opportunity” fliers sent to lobbyists. See for yourself: I’ve gotten a hold of an invitation and an accompanying personal email from Post publisher Katharine Weymouth to Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a key figure in the health care debate.

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Washington Post cancels lobbyist event amid uproar

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Politico - By Mike Allen - Jul. 03 (Breaking News) - For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few": Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors. The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff." With the newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said this morning that he was "appalled" by the plan and said the newsroom will not participate.

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Post Publisher Cancels Plans for Off-the-Record 'Salons'

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Howard Kurtz - Jul. 02 (Breaking News) - Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth today canceled plans for a series of policy dinners at her home after learning that marketing fliers offered lobbyists access to Obama administration officials, members of Congress and Post journalists in exchange for payments as high as $250,000.

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Bush administration leaks bolstered Rick Renzi’s reelection bid

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Hill - By Murray Waas - Jun. 24 (News Report) - In the fall of 2006, one day after the Justice Department granted permission to a U.S. attorney to place a wiretap on a Republican congressman suspected of corruption, existence of the investigation was leaked to the press — not only compromising the sensitive criminal probe but tipping the lawmaker off to the wiretap.

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Notoriety Trumps Preservation as Some Web Sites Scrub Hateful Posts - washingtonpost.com

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Monica Hesse - Jun. 12 (News Report) - Shortly after authorities identified their suspect in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting Wednesday, the world began searching for traces of James W. von Brunn online. Those who Googled immediately were able to find him: a personal Web site claiming Jewish "conspiracies," diatribes posted on message boards. But those who started their hunt just a few hours later would have found only empty holes -- information that was scrubbed away as Web sites figured out how to address the fact that they had once hosted the words of an accused murderer.

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2 Ex-Timesmen Say They Had a Tip on Watergate First

Mon, 25 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Richard PÉrez PeÑa - May. 25 (Special Report) - Robert M. Smith, a former Times reporter, says that two months after the burglary, over lunch at a Washington restaurant, the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, L. Patrick Gray, disclosed explosive aspects of the case, including the culpability of the former attorney general, John Mitchell, and hinted at White House involvement. Mr. Smith rushed back to The Times’s bureau in Washington to repeat the story to Robert H. Phelps, an editor there, who took notes and tape-recorded the conversation, according to both men. But then Mr. Smith had to hand off the story — he had quit The Times and was leaving town the next day to attend Yale Law School.

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Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Andrew C. Revkin - Apr. 24 (News Report) - For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

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Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Scott Shane - Apr. 20 (News Report) - The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.

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US tried to gag Binyam Mohamed with plea bargain

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Telegraph - By Nick Allen - Mar. 27 (News Report) - He would also have been required to abandon a legal attempt to obtain documents which he believed could prove his innocence. Clive Stafford Smith, Mr Mohamed's lawyer, said: "This reflects the way the US government has consistently tried to cover up the truth of Binyam Mohamed's torture.

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Want to "fix" CNBC? Check this out

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Joe Garofoli - Mar. 17 (News Report) - Now that the Jon Stewart smackdown of Jim "Mad Money" Cramer has made the rounds of the Interwebs, folks want to know: What can I do to pile on? There's FixCNBC.com , which tells Cramer's cable net: "You screwed up badly. Don't apologize -- fix it!" "Americans need CNBC to do strong, watchdog journalism -- asking tough questions to Wall Street, debunking lies, and reporting the truth. Instead, CNBC has done PR for Wall Street. You've been so obsessed with getting 'access' to failed CEOs that you willfully passed on misinformation to the public for years, helping to get us into the economic crisis we face today."

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War on Gaza - In the US, Gaza is a different war

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Aljazeera - By Habib Battah - Jan. 06 (News Analysis) - The images of two women on the front page of an edition of The Washington Post last week illustrates how mainstream US media has been reporting Israel's war on Gaza. On the left was a Palestinian mother who had lost five children. On the right was a nearly equally sized picture of an Israeli woman who was distressed by the fighting, according to the caption. As the Palestinian woman cradled the dead body of one child, another infant son, his face blackened and disfigured with bruises, cried beside her. The Israeli woman did not appear to be wounded in any way but also wept.

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Flying Shoes Create a Hero In Arab World

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Sudarsan Raghavan - Dec. 16 (News Report) - In hurling footwear and insults at President Bush, Muntadar al-Zaidi expressed what relatives said were his own frustrations with American policy in Iraq and made himself into an overnight celebrity in the Arab world.

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A Scandal in Chicago That Justifies Investigative Journalism

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By David Carr - Dec. 15 (News Analysis) - “This was an extraordinary week for The Chicago Tribune,” he said. “On Monday, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, and on Tuesday, this huge story broke. There are two messages there. One, that the business model has to be reinvented and two, the importance of doing public service reporting. In the future, we will be doing fewer things and doing them better, and this kind of reporting will be a pillar of what we continue to do.”

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Why NBC News Should've Known Better

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Portfolio - By Jeff Bercovici - Dec. 02 (Investigative Report) - In January 2000, Salon broke the news that the Office of National Drug Control Policy, under McCaffrey's leadership, was quietly paying television networks to weave explicit anti-drug messages into some of their most popular shows. (It was a little more complicated than that -- rather than giving the networks cash, ONDCP was giving them back airtime it had already purchased at a discount, allowing them to resell it at a higher rate. But that was the gist.) After a period of defending/minimizing its actions, ONDCP dropped the controversial program a year later.

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