Put Thursday evening, December 2, on your calendar. Press Club’s annual meeting will be from 6 to 8 p.m. in the beautiful Plaza Room of the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton. Dick Weiss will give us a recap of the club’s very successful year and present this year’s CATFISH Award. Charles Brennan will be our entertaining keynote speaker.
Jon Stewart’s rally to restore sanity turned into a rally against cable news media. The media are still trying to figure out how to react. Some are upset. Keith Olbermann claimed that Stewart “jumped the shark”. The New York Times called Stewart a political activist. The right barely noticed. But if you pay attention to the media reaction to Stewart, you get the feeling that the media aren’t happy.
News organizations have the right – the responsibility even – to discipline or fire reporters who violate professional ethical standards. But NPR reacted too hastily and too drastically when it fired news analyst Juan Williams for comments he made about Muslims.
To fire or not to fire, that is the question. And recently it seems as if an increasing number of news organizations are deciding to pull the plug on journalists who have voiced their own opinions outside the walls of their employers’ corporations.
Watching media cover Kentucky politics this year has never been dull. The latest incident involves Lauren Valle, the moveon.org worker who suffered the infamous head stomp from Rand Paul supporter Tim Profitt.