Category: Media

Anonymous poster must be ID’d

Media
by William H. Freivogel

WILLIAM H. FREIVOGEL / The Illinois Supreme Court ruled this week that a northern Illinois public official must be told the name of an anonymous poster to a newspaper website who likened the politician to former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, the child sex abuser. The decision means that the anonymous poster cannot dodge a libel suit by hiding behind anonymity. The Illinois high court ruled unanimously in favor of Stephenson County Board Chairman Bill Hadley, who has been demanding to know the identity of the poster for four years. Under the decision, Comcast, which provides the poster with internet service, would be required to turn over the poster’s identity.

St. Louis media notes

Media
by Tripp Frohlichstein

TRIPP FROHLICHSTEIN / St. Louis TV stations need to be more honest with their viewers. Frequently, they present stories as new that are actually a day or more old. The latest example occurred on KSDK (Channel 5) at noon on June 18. The story was about an incident the day before when two planes began taking off at the same time at Midway Airport in Chicago. Fortunately, a collision was averted. But anchor Kay Quinn read, “We have new information at this noon hour about just how serious a near disaster this was.” However, she provided no information that hadn’t aired on the news the night before. Nor did she give any indication as to “how serious it was.” She did not even tell viewers how close of a call it was (or wasn’t). Repeating the story is not the problem. The problem comes when viewers are deceived by “sensationalistic” and inaccurate writing.

Leo Drey: Progressive Pioneer

Media
by Charles L. Klotzer

CHARLES KLOTZER / Leo Drey left us at the age of 98. It was in the mid-sixties that I first met Leo. He had heard about struggling FOCUS/Midwest magazine and wondered how it was doing. We met in his unpretentious office–no secretary. You just walked in. The simplicity of his and his wife’s lifestyle, both in their work and in their home, was in sharp contrast to the far-reaching progressive adventure they pursued over these many decades. While Leo devoted himself to sustain an environment on the ground that would benefit generations to come, his wife Kay became a prophetess, who not only analyzed and recognized the implicit dangers of nuclear power plants, but also became an unrelenting voice informing the public and government how the nuclear industry poisons our environment. St. Louis Magazine called both “Green Giants”.

Good Clinton v. bad Clinton

Media
by George Salamon

GEORGE SALAMON / Writing about Marie Antoinette, Judith Thurman commented in a 2006 article in the New Yorker that the woman famous for a remark she never uttered (“Let them eat cake”) is “periodically reviled or celebrated.” The same could be said about the media’s treatment of Hillary Clinton since she stepped into the national limelight as Bill Clinton’s wife during his 1992 bid for the presidency. Now that she is campaigning for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, many publications and websites devote much of their coverage to one or the other of these familiar approaches. Recent opinion pieces in the online publications of the liberal New Republic and the conservative Washington Free Beacon provide a sort of “comfort food,” the first for Clinton admirers and the second for Clinton detractors. But neither provides much food for thought based on solid information, history and context.

Should this photo be published?

Media
by Lindani Memani

BY LINDANI MEMANI / When South Africa’s largest Sunday paper, the Sunday Times, on its April 19 front page published a photograph of a man in the act of being stabbed and killed, readers took to the social media and aired their views. It is common for photojournalists to be condemned for the job they do. Some in the industry are accused of taking photographs and walking away with Pulitzer prizes unconcerned about what became of the people in the images that earned them recognition. But that’s not the case in this instance. When the media cover violence by publishing a foreign national in the act of being killed, people can reflect on their ideologies, help the police with arrests and organize for social change.