Category: Media

By SCOTT LAMBERT// New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter didn’t spend a lot of time retired before he started a new career.

After a hall of fame baseball career that saw Jeter act cautiously around the press, Jeter announced he’s going to become a member of the Fourth Estate – at least the sports end of it. Jeter launched the Player’s Tribune, a web site dedicated to allowing athletes the chance to speak out in their own words, therefore bypassing the gatekeepers that are sports media. The masthead of the web site describes the aim of the site as:

“The Players’ Tribune aims to provide unique insight into the daily sports conversation and to publish first-person stories directly from athletes.” (site here)

By GEORGE SALAMON// “Journalists have no choice but to fight back because if they don’t, they will become irrelevant.” James Risen, NYT investigative reporter
What are they supposed to fight against? Fellow journalist Lindsey Bever of the UK’s Guardian spelled it out: “Committing an act of journalism could soon become an imprisonable offense.” That’s so because Risen refused to name sources for his report on a botched CIA operation in Iran (in his 2006 book “State of War”) in court and may soon go to prison rather than “break his vow of confidentiality.”

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.

By GEORGE SALAMON// Reporting on Israel-Palestine, especially during the August exchange of rocket attacks from Gaza and Israel’s bombing of the densely populated strip, drew criticism from supporters of one side and those on the other. Since declaration of the ongoing cease-fire, things are not improving. Both sides insist that reporting generally ignores the whole truth, especially the part they deem central to understanding the “real” issues at the root of the conflict. This is a case where critics are right much of the time.

By GEORGE SALAMON// “American society is a sort of flat, freshwater pond, which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.” Henry Adams

The great grandson of John Adams and grandson of John Quincy Adams would still be right today about America except for the “silently, without reaction” part. America reacted to the Ferguson shooting of African-American Michael Brown by a white Ferguson cop on August 9th in reams of newspaper comments and posts on internet blogs. The media responded as well, reporting and then analyzing accurately and thoroughly on a few occasions, hastily and mindlessly on many more. (Media coverage has been and continues to be assessed in the pages of GJR.)