Are the media doing a good job of covering the environment? Answering this question is not as easy as it might seem. Following Earth Day in 1970 the media ratcheted up their environmental coverage. But many legacy media today, nearly a half-century later, no longer have environmental reporters, or if they do, such journalists often…
Sports reporters are having a heyday with Los Angeles Dodgers’ Chase Utley’s recent post-season slide into New York Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada. Most sports media pundits agree Utley went in too late and too high. As a result, Tejada’s right leg was broken. Sports pundits now are debating whether or not Major League Baseball’s chief…
BY WILLIAM A. BABCOCK// Just when you thought it safe to follow the news without yet another Ferguson-related story, the New York Times and Fox News have entered the mud-fighting fray.
Fox’s Howard Kurtz, hardly an unbiased Fox News Channel journalist, accused the Times of making a “reckless move” in publishing the approximate address of Darren Wilson, the police office who shot and killed Michael Brown in August.
By WILLIAM A. BABCOCK// How should the media portray Indian nicknames and logos? Before even going there, consider:
• A few years ago the journalist telephoned the chief of Minnesota’s Ojibwa Nation. He told the chief he was reporting on Native American gambling. The chief immediately responded, “Stop right there. Only you liberal white boys call us ‘Native Americans.’ It’s ‘Indians,’ got it?”
• A young woman from a Midwest Indian reservation was asked in class what she thought about the Cleveland Indians baseball cap with the toothy, red-skinned, feather-bedecked “Chief Wahoo” logo. She responded, “That’s the most popular cap on our reservation; it’s worn by lots of kids. We know the logo’s stereotypical. We’re not stupid. What’s the big f***ing deal?”
By WILLIAM A. BABCOCK// For those of a certain age, the ongoing protests in Hong Kong bring back unpleasant memories of June 4, 1989.
The Tiananmen Square Massacre, as it is referred to in the United States, also started with peaceful protests. In the end, though, tanks and armed Chinese military units ended up killing between 600 and 3,000 protesters in and around the world’s largest public square. And as the Chinese government has consistently censored news of that bloodbath, few Chinese citizens know what transpired then in their own capital.