Winners of GJR awards. The Gateway Journalism Review presented five awards at last week’s 7th Annual First Amendment Celebration. From left, Bill McClellan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist who received the Lifetime Achievement award; Dawn Chapman and Karen Nickel, co-founders of the Just MomsSTL environmental group, winners of the Whistleblowers award; Thomas Harvey, co-founder of ArchCity Defenders,…
opinion One thing the press does badly in its admirable pursuit of balanced coverage is create false equivalencies. That’s what’s happening when the press says the exchange of accusations between former FBI Director James Comey and President Trump is just another “food fight.” That term – used by Fox’s Chris Wallace and House Speaker Paul…
I spent the fall in Israel as part of a semester-long international relations program far removed from my hometown of Carbondale. On the plane ride back to America I made a list of goals for my last semester of college. I figured as a “retired” editor-in-chief, I’d return to the Daily Egyptian to help out…
In the past months the Daily Egyptian, the student newspaper at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, published a series of stories highlighting Chancellor Carlo Montemagno’s dealings at SIU since arriving to the university in July. These stories include his role in hiring family and using university money to move them to Carbondale from Alberta, Canada. The…
President Trump’s narcissistic claim that the search of his lawyer’s office was an “attack on our country” echoed from the days of Watergate, the Pentagon Papers and the imperial presidency. Trump, like President Nixon, is conflating himself with the country, mistaking his welfare for the nation’s. The press has a special role disabusing presidents of…
America’s temple of democracy is built on the optimistic belief that free people can find the truth to run a democracy — if all people are allowed to say what they think. Citizens — not just kings and queens and presidents — have the inalienable right to use reason to discover the facts and make…
If you got a tip that state police were fixing tickets for big shots and political figures, how would you check it out? In 1980, I worked on just such a story with Roy Malone, my friend and former colleague at the AP and then the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I didn’t do much work on…
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A court case may be needed to determine whether Missouri’s Open Records Law applies to public officials’ social media accounts. Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley wrote a letter in February concluding that the office of Gov. Eric Greitens is not required to turn over records from his Facebook and Twitter accounts.…