The unprecedented events in Boston – the lockdown of a major U.S. city during a manhunt for a terrorism suspect – demonstrated the amazing power of the media to help and sometimes hinder a criminal investigation. The manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects also demonstrated the way in which the media can contribute to, and heighten the frenzy and sense of, danger in a community.
This is a listing of media notes as compiled by Benjamin Israel.
If Joseph Pulitzer could return to Missouri’s state capital, he’d probably recognize a recent development that was familiar during his time: politicians publishing newspapers. At the beginning of this legislative session, Rod Jetton, a former House speaker, launched a startup weekly, the Missouri Times. The newspaper and its website promotion promised “a different kind of media outlet” that would become “Missouri’s newspaper of politics and culture.” The journal’s arrival represented a new phase in the evolution of Missouri government coverage.
The reports from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism remain relentlessly glum. There is no need to “do the numbers” one more depressing time. They’re still going down, with an increase in digital subscriptions for some newspapers the exceptional bright spot. The latest report, “The State of the News Media 2013,” lists the usual suspects for the continuing decline: fewer people enjoy following the news; half of all Americans get their news digitally; only 23 percent of Americans read a newspaper daily; only 34 percent of Americans under 30 watch TV news. Same old, same old. But there is one sentence in the report that ought to make practicing and prospective journalists sit up and pay attention: “Nearly a third of U.S. adults, 31 percent, have stopped turning to a news outlet because it no longer provided the news they were accustomed to getting.” Yow! The news junkies are abandoning the news. These are the people who are hoping for information and insight to help them understand local, national and international events. They’re telling us that they’re not getting that understanding any longer. So what’s going on here?
The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) is committed to freedom of speech and the press in the United States and abroad. AEJMC believes that this commitment must include a free exchange of information and ideas, even some information that the U.S. government considers or wishes to be “secret.” The Pentagon Papers, Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair and the existence of clandestine CIA prisons are examples in which secret government information was leaked to, and publicized, by the news media. In these and in many other cases, the dissemination of secret information served a greater good to American society by informing the public and by allowing for a needed debate on the ethics of secret government policies and covert actions. We believe that a democracy shrouded in secrecy encourages corruption, and we agree, as Justice Louis D. Brandeis of the U.S. Supreme Court said, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.”