Tag: media

Mainstream media cut back on statehouse coverage as special interests launch

Media
by Terry Ganey

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.

Where are news junkies getting their information now?

Media
by George Salamon

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?

AEJMC releases statement on leak prosecutions

Media
by Kyu Ho Youm

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.”

Media bungle Steubenville rape trial verdict coverage

Media
by Aaron S. Veenstra

“You think you could tell a rapist to stop doing what he’s doing? Do you, really? And he’s going to listen to an ad campaign to stop?” At the end of a heated exchange over guns and personal safety for women on his Fox News program, Sean Hannity asked that of his guest, Democratic strategist Zerlina Maxwell. During the segment, Maxwell suggested that the best way to stop rape was to teach young men not to rape, rather than to arm all women. Hannity’s statement reveals a telling blind spot. He inhabits a world in which there is no rape culture, only rapists, who are criminals.

New York Times holds up mirror to America – but who's looking?

Media
by George Salamon

During the past three weeks the New York Times published five remarkable articles about America’s economic divide. Together they paint a devastating picture of a country moving inexorably toward a two-tier society in which the rich will continue to get richer while middle-class and-blue-collar workers cling to a life of stagnant wages and high unemployment. Reader response was heavy, on the whole indicting the government in Washington from the 1990s until now as “profit before people administrations.” But no response seems to be coming from the corridors of power in politics, finance and business.