Misreporting the Fort Hood Mass Shootings

The New York Times couldn’t confirm it, but reported a disparaging comment written by somebody of a similar name anyway. The Associated Press ran a full, related story — based on unconfirmed quotes — on the alleged Muslim perpetrator of Thursday’s unfortunate shooting incident at Fort Hood allegedly yelling “Allahu Akbar” as he fired on his unsuspecting victims. The Daily Beast decided to run this same tidbit as a lead on their landing page too. See this visual comparison between The Times and The Daily Beast.

How is this going to help the American public form a coherent picture of reality in their heads? How is this not going to further inflame American public sentiment towards Muslims? I am not saying to conceal such elements in reporting a story, but being self-reflexive and according a person’s ethnicity and religious beliefs adequate context is also part of the reporting process. It’s about being fair and balanced, no?

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The Art of Spinning an American Political Tale

Just how many historical political shifts can there be… in a space of a year? On an annual basis in America apparently, where politics is covered in the media like sports. The political spin on Election Night Tuesday began as soon as the news broke of individual victories. Spin not just by the political parties, but also by the tons of pundits in the twittersphere, network television shows and various websites who argue incessantly about the meaning of these results. Pity World Series baseball was not on the same night, otherwise it would be interesting to see if Fox News could have still held on to their top-dog status.

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Tempering Dreams With Harsh Reality

Photo: Flickr User Yan Arief

TANKING economy, check; struggling newspaper industry, check; few opportunities for fresh young talent, check.

So why would any fresh graduate choose to quadruple his student debt by going straight into graduate journalism school, only to enter an industry that is seemingly devoid of opportunities?

Well, I did. My friends thought I was insane, but I could not imagine doing anything else. I guess I also wanted to attend Columbia Journalism School because the idea of hazarding a calculated risk appealed to me.

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Journalism’s Problem Isn’t Gawker. It’s Advertising.

Washington Post’s Ian Shapira fired the latest salvo in the ongoing debate about paid media content with his thoughtful “rant” over the weekend about Gawker “stealing” his story. But he raised the bar by invoking legal considerations, wondering aloud if Gawker’s (mis)use of his work amounted to copyright infringement.

And now, more believe he, along with many other “conventional” media outlets, may have a case. Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab has stats possibly backing Shapira’s argument. So should the central issue of what constitutes “fair use” determine how things will pan out? It’s not exactly prudent when most debates on that leads down a slippery slope. Besides, technologists have insisted moves made by The Associated Press last week to “protect” its content are backward and will be bad for business in the long run.

But at the end of the day, it is the bottom line that drives business decisions. People such as Clay Shirky and Jay Rosen may eventually be right about the intellectual architecture of the mediascape, but the details of how we actually get there are what matter most. This is really about advertising revenue.

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Secretary of State, not Superwoman

Reading New York Times’ David Landler’s commentary on Hillary Clinton’s first major address as Secretary of State at the Council of Foreign Relations, one gets the impression that Clinton is Superwoman repressed by her boss and nemesis in the White House.

Landler calls her speech “an effort to recapture the limelight after a period in which Mrs. Clinton has nursed both a broken elbow and the perception that the State Department has lost influence to an assertive White House.” He also situates her speech against the backdrop of the antecedent rivalry between Clinton and Obama from their bruising presidential primary campaigns last year.

What is there to recapture? Politico reported Secretary Clinton has traveled, in her first six months in office, nearly 100,000 miles visiting two dozen countries, many of them more than once – and that’s even more than two of her more successful predecessors, James Baker and Henry Kissinger in their first six-months. Besides, a successful Secretary of State is not necessarily somebody who is constantly in the limelight. Landler’s harping on the Obama-Clinton rivalry also comes across as being tired and neglects Clinton’s own competence and dynamism.

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