On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, we’re revisiting this video, which we first posted several months ago — it’s NBC News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent, Richard Engel, detailing to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow the horrifying tale of how he was abducted by pro-Assad forces within Syria, and how he came to be freed. Engel is one of the lucky ones (extremely lucky, considering the content of his story) — 23 professional journalists have been killed covering the civil war, the majority of them Syrian, on top of dozens more slain citizen journalists.
Wonder what’s going on in the world and how to find out about it?
See yesterday’s Doonesbury and know you’re not alone.
Click to embiggen.
You’re not alone – you can always come to http://pulitzercenter.org to find out what’s going on in the world!
An editor at the Guardian argues that newspapers should be funded by a tax on internet service providers, because public journalism needs to be supported. But there are a host of flaws with the idea, including the fact that large newspapers are not synonymous with journalism.
![theatlantic:
On Being the Lady with the Microphone, by Carole Simpson
Way back in 1992 I became the first woman and first minority to moderate a presidential debate. This past summer I was constantly asked, “Why hasn’t another woman moderated a presidential debate?”
Why people thought I had the answer, I don’t know. It should have been directed to the Commission on Presidential Debates. Supported by the Republican and Democratic Parties, the Commission has been responsible for producing the debates since 1987. Together with campaign officials for the candidates, Commission members decide the dates, locations, formats and moderators for the one debate for vice president and the three for president.
Allow me to point out here that of the 17 members most are male and white. Only two women serve on the Commission. Perhaps a problem?
Read more. [Image: C-SPAN]
I think the biggest problem regarding the debates is that the parties control them rather than an independent, non-partisan organization, such as the League of Women Voters, which ran the 1976, 1980 and 1984 debates. The LWV pulled out of debate sponsorship in 1988 with this statement from League President Nancy M. Neuman:
“The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debate scheduled for mid-October because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter.
“It has become clear to us that the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mauyj614ra1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
On Being the Lady with the Microphone, by Carole Simpson
Way back in 1992 I became the first woman and first minority to moderate a presidential debate. This past summer I was constantly asked, “Why hasn’t another woman moderated a presidential debate?”
Why people thought I had the answer, I don’t know. It should have been directed to the Commission on Presidential Debates. Supported by the Republican and Democratic Parties, the Commission has been responsible for producing the debates since 1987. Together with campaign officials for the candidates, Commission members decide the dates, locations, formats and moderators for the one debate for vice president and the three for president.
Allow me to point out here that of the 17 members most are male and white. Only two women serve on the Commission. Perhaps a problem?
Read more. [Image: C-SPAN]
I think the biggest problem regarding the debates is that the parties control them rather than an independent, non-partisan organization, such as the League of Women Voters, which ran the 1976, 1980 and 1984 debates. The LWV pulled out of debate sponsorship in 1988 with this statement from League President Nancy M. Neuman:
“The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debate scheduled for mid-October because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter.
“It has become clear to us that the candidates’ organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public.”
Michael Jordan = “failed baseball player”
Carmelo Anthony = “noted anti-police activist”
… UM …
Fox Nation = “notorious race-baiting troll site”
(via)
UPDATE: Fox Nation = “unoriginal notorious race-baiting troll site,” which bogarted this from the “aspiring online rag” Washington Free Beacon.
"Being fact-checked is not very fun. Good fact-checkers have a preternatural inclination toward pedantry, and sometimes will address you in a prosecutorial tone. That is their job and the adversarial tone is even more important than the actual facts they correct. In my experience, seeing your name on the cover of a magazine will take you far in the journey toward believing your own bullshit. It is human to do so, and fact-checkers serve as a valuable check to prevent writers from lapsing into the kind of arrogant laziness which breeds plagiarism and the manufacture of facts. The fact-checker (and the copy-editor too actually) is a dam against you embarrassing yourself, or worse, being so arrogant that don’t even realize you’ve embarrassed yourself. Put differently, a culture of fact-checking, of honesty, is as important as the actual fact-checking."
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, in praise of fact checkers. (via theatlantic)
(via theatlantic)
"Some part of all of us wants to be credited and enjoys the acclaim. And a big part of all of us likes getting answers. But we now live in a world where counter-intuitive bullshitting is valorized, where the pose of argument is more important than the actual pursuit of truth, where clever answers take precedence over profound questions. We have no patience for mystery. We want the deciphering of gods. We want oracles. And we want all of it right now."
— Ta-Nehisi Coates on journalism, Jonah Lehrer, and the truth. (via theatlantic)
(via npr)
All in a day’s work
npr:
A slideshow of reporters LITERALLY SPRINTING to get the SCOTUS decision out yesterday/possible product placement should any of these sneaker brands choose to take up the mantle of “pressed journalists’ footwear of choice.”
—Daisy
This is fantastic.
"It was clearly something that he was familiar with and I wasn’t. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that this went on."
— Journalist Jeremy Paxman • Testifying before the Leveson inquiry, about an event he attended during 2002, during which then Daily Mail editor Piers Morgan taught him about phone hacking. Paxman told British officials that Morgan’s openness was “quite shocking”, particularly when it came to gaining and maintaining access to phones. “[Morgan explained] that the way to get access to people’s messages was was go to the factory default setting and press either 0000 or 1234,” testified Paxman, adding, “if you didn’t put on your own code… his words: “You’re a fool.” Unsurprisingly, Piers Morgan was less than pleased with Paxman’s testimony. source (via • follow)
Pulitzer prize winning reporter Charlie LeDuff left the New York Times to cover his hometown, Detroit (our interview about that is here). Now, he’s reporting for the local Fox affiliate, where he produced maybe our favorite local newscast story ever.
Sexting, shameless judge + a reporter doing stand-ups in Ray-Bans + a distorted voice modulator interview = our favorite non-MCA related thing on the internet today.
In addition to producing this truly fantastic local news item, Charlie LeDuff also wrote one of our all-time favorite pieces of reporting.
Wow. This is awesome.
Because they were called assassins.
(via theatlantic)
![theatlantic:
What Do Fact-Checkers and Anesthesiologists Have In Common?
What’s most interesting about fact checkers is the circumstances they work under and the traits they must possess to perform their job. Generally speaking, fact checking is a largely thankless job where the person is invisible if he does his job perfectly and is only noticed for his work when things go wrong. He must work confidently, meticulously, and take accuracy as its own reward. If he makes an error the stakes can be enormous—a loss of his job, a lawsuit, the damaged reputation of a writer, editors, and a publication. He will receive no byline. This requires essentially a reverse skill set, hell, a reverse attitude about life in a culture that seeks endless pats on the back, where everyone in Little League gets a trophy—even the backup right fielder on the last place team. Where we collectively are in a mad panic to have our thoughts and actions known via lengthy blog posts, and in nugget form on Facebook and Twitter, our every mediocre photo shared on Flickr. Where we are willing to debase ourselves to have our personal dramas on reality TV. Where ads are increasingly tailored to us specifically (thanks to all those aforementioned Facebook posts). The American ethos screams YOU, the individual, are important, you must be counted, you must make yourself noticed! What type of person, in a society with these values, goes the other way and chooses anonymity?
It turns out, the lonely, lowly fact checker, is in actuality not so lonely. There is a commonality of his circumstance and traits among a select group of other professionals, a collective I call The Invisibles, and we as a culture can learn from this unique group.
Read more. [Image: Shutterstock]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m086qmhhge1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
What Do Fact-Checkers and Anesthesiologists Have In Common?
What’s most interesting about fact checkers is the circumstances they work under and the traits they must possess to perform their job. Generally speaking, fact checking is a largely thankless job where the person is invisible if he does his job perfectly and is only noticed for his work when things go wrong. He must work confidently, meticulously, and take accuracy as its own reward. If he makes an error the stakes can be enormous—a loss of his job, a lawsuit, the damaged reputation of a writer, editors, and a publication. He will receive no byline. This requires essentially a reverse skill set, hell, a reverse attitude about life in a culture that seeks endless pats on the back, where everyone in Little League gets a trophy—even the backup right fielder on the last place team. Where we collectively are in a mad panic to have our thoughts and actions known via lengthy blog posts, and in nugget form on Facebook and Twitter, our every mediocre photo shared on Flickr. Where we are willing to debase ourselves to have our personal dramas on reality TV. Where ads are increasingly tailored to us specifically (thanks to all those aforementioned Facebook posts). The American ethos screams YOU, the individual, are important, you must be counted, you must make yourself noticed! What type of person, in a society with these values, goes the other way and chooses anonymity?
It turns out, the lonely, lowly fact checker, is in actuality not so lonely. There is a commonality of his circumstance and traits among a select group of other professionals, a collective I call The Invisibles, and we as a culture can learn from this unique group.
Read more. [Image: Shutterstock]
With these words, NPR commits itself as an organization to avoid the worst excesses of “he said, she said” journalism. It says to itself that a report characterized by false balance is a false report. It introduces a new and potentially powerful concept of fairness: being “fair to the truth,” which as we know is not always evenly distributed among the sides in a public dispute.
Maintaining the “appearance of balance” isn’t good enough, NPR says. “If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side…” we have to say so. When we are spun, we don’t just report it. “We tell our audience…” This is spin!
Rosen took a particular liking to lines like these: “Our goal is not to please those whom we report on or to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth.” Read NPR’s ethics guidelines and consider it for yourself.
(Source: shortformblog)
