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Journalism

Lessons From One Hundred Years Of Journalism

September 22, 2023 Mischa Geracoulis, Project Censored. , , , , ,
In Mr. Associated Press, Gene Allen investigates the Associated Press (AP) and its trajectory from a pony express news agency founded in 1846 to the international stage, by way of the person most responsible for that transformation, Kent Cooper (1880-1965). As exceptional as every era believes itself to be, the history chronicled in these pages reveals that many of the problems currently facing the media and the public’s relationship to it are reiterations of the past. Some one hundred years on, Allen—a professor emeritus of journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University—analyzes Cooper’s time in the news industry and spotlights evergreen issues, including the politicization, polarization, and corporatization of the news.

NYT’s Incredibly Low Bar For Labeling Someone ‘Pro-Putin’

September 21, 2023 Bryce Greene, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , , ,
It doesn’t take much in our media system to be labeled a “Putin apologist” or “pro-Russia.” In this New Cold War, even suggesting that the official enemy is not Hitlerian or completely irrational could earn ridicule and attack. After the largely stalled Ukrainian counteroffensive against the Russian occupation, conditions on the front have hardened into what many observers describe as a “stalemate.” Like virtually all wars, the Russo-Ukrainian War will end with a negotiated settlement, and the quicker it happens, the quicker the bodies will stop piling up. Despite this, anyone who advocates actually pursuing negotiations is immediately attacked.

Student Journalists Nationwide Face Censorship And Challenges

September 20, 2023 Tamar Sarai, Scheer Post. , , , ,
In the age of social media, with new platforms emerging seemingly every few months, high school newspapers are just one outlet where young people can share their voices and relay the stories of their lives. Yet student-run newsrooms play a profound and unique role not just in the school community, but also in the broader media ecosystem surrounding each campus. The power of student media is perhaps most obvious in cases where student-led newsrooms break major news. In 2017, The Booster Redux, the student-run newspaper at Pittsburg High in Pittsburg, Kansas, made national news when a simple profile on the school’s new principal led to an investigative story revealing that she had lied during the hiring process and attended an unaccredited university for her master’s and doctoral degrees. The principal resigned shortly after the students’ reporting garnered the attention of national news outlets. Just last May, reporters from The Classic, the award-winning student newspaper of Townsend Harris High School in Queens, New York, brought to light a sexual abuse scandal that went uncovered for years.

Journalist Sues Over Gag Rules At County Jail In Pennsylvania

August 28, 2023 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , , ,
Journalist Brittany Hailer has sued a county jail in Pennsylvania for "strictly enforcing" gag rules against prisoners and the jail's employees and contractors. Hailer claims the rules allegedly violate her constitutional rights to "gather news and receive information from otherwise willing speakers." The lawsuit is believed to be a first-of-its-kind lawsuit brought by a journalist against such speech restrictions, and Hailer is represented by the Media Freedom and Information Access (MFIA) clinic at Yale Law School and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP).

The Press And 2024

August 24, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. , , , ,
We now tip into the 2024 election season in some kind of official way, with the Republicans scheduled to hold their first primary debate Wednesday evening. Here is my question at this early moment: How are American readers and viewers going to follow events such that they can grasp what is at issue and—for those who insist on indulging in this practice—vote come November 3, 2024? Here is my answer: I don’t know. With diligent effort and greater resort to independent media is the best I can propose as of now. The coming presidential election already proves corrosive in all manner of ways, among them institutional corruption and a daring White House coverup of Watergate magnitude.

Raid On Kansas Paper Shows Perilous State Of Free Press

August 15, 2023 Ari Paul, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , , ,
As the police raided Marion County Record editor and publisher Eric Meyer’s home August 11 (Committee to Protect Journalists, 8/12/23; AP, 8/13/23; New York Times, 8/13/23), his 98-year-old mother was aghast, watching the cops rummage through her things. “She was very upset, yelling about ‘Gestapo tactics’ and ‘where are all the good people?’” Meyer told FAIR. He said that after the raid she “was beside herself, she wouldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep and finally went to bed about sunrise.” Meyer’s mother, a co-owner of the paper, eventually told her son that the whole affair was “going to be the death of me.”

Kansas Newspaper Owner Died After Police Raid ‘Hitler Tactics’

August 13, 2023 Melinda Henneberger, The Kansas City Star. , , , ,
A newswoman since 1953 and co-owner of the local paper in her hometown in central Kansas, she lived to see her Marion County Record, as well as her home, raided by police on Friday, for reasons that defied both law and logic. It is not hyperbole to say that this attack on the people’s right to know appears to have killed her. On Friday, police showed up looking for evidence that a reporter had run an improper computer search to confirm an accurate report that a local business owner applying for a liquor license had lost her driver’s license over a DUI. According to coverage of this story on the Record’s website, the reporter “made no attempt to conceal her identity, providing her name.”

We Carry The Burden Of Repatriating Our Ancestors

August 9, 2023 Mary Hudetz, Pro Publica. , , ,
We had reached the top of a sandstone mesa when Theresa Pasqual set down her hiking pole and scanned the storied canyon before us. We could see the centuries-old buildings of Chaco Canyon, a site in northwest New Mexico that her tribe’s ancestors, the Ancestral Puebloans, had occupied before eventually establishing other communities in the region. Pueblo Bonito, the canyon’s largest structure, sprawled from near the base of the bluff where we stood, its walls arcing around hundreds of hollowed rooms. Two colleagues and I had traveled to the canyon with Pasqual as part of our reporting on how the nation’s most prestigious museums and universities had excavated Native American cultural sites like this and how they continued to keep what they took.

Assange Is ‘Dangerously Close’ To Extradition For Revealing Crimes

July 18, 2023 Marjorie Cohn, Truthout. , , , , , ,
For nearly five years, publisher and journalist Julian Assange has fought extradition to the United States where he faces 175 years in prison for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes. Instead of protecting freedom of the press, to which he pledged allegiance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, Joe Biden is continuing Donald Trump’s prosecution of Assange under the infamous Espionage Act. James Ball is one of at least four journalists that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI are pressuring to cooperate with the prosecution of Assange, Ball wrote in Rolling Stone.

He Saw A US Helicopter Gun Down Fellow Journalists In Iraq

July 1, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. , , ,
Former Reuters journalist Dean Yates’ career has taken him around the world and up-close-and-personal with some of the century’s worst tragedies and atrocities. From the 2002 Bali bombings and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, to the frontlines of war in Lebanon and Iraq—Yates’ experiences have taken a deeply personal toll. The killing of two Iraqi journalist colleagues by a US Apache gunship finally pushed him over the edge. After years of dealing with PTSD, substance abuse, and psychiatric hospitalization, Yates has written a new memoir about his journey, Line in the Sand. Dean Yates joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his new book, his career, and his healing journey.

Israel Cannot Rebut Apartheid

June 30, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , ,
On 24 June 2023, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) Herzl Halevi, Chief of Shin Bet (Intelligence) Ronen Bar, and Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai released a joint statement. They pointed to ‘violent attacks… by Israeli citizens against innocent Palestinians’, which they characterised as ‘nationalist terror in every sense’. Such a statement is rare, particularly the description of the violence as ‘nationalist terror’ and the rendering of Palestinian victims as ‘innocent’. Typically, high-ranking officials in the Israeli government portray such attacks as retaliation for terror attacks by Palestinians.

New Research Examines Restrictions On Incarcerated Journalists

June 19, 2023 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , ,
A briefing from the Prison Policy Initiative documents many of the restrictions that prisons in the United States impose to prevent journalism from incarcerated individuals. Fourteen states—Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Virginia—have a “total ban on business and compensation.” That means they do not allow incarcerated journalists or writers to receive payment for their work. The United States government’s Federal Bureau of Prisons has what is described as an “explicit ban on journalism.”

If The Police Can Decide Who Qualifies As A Journalist, There Is No Free Press

June 2, 2023 Eleanor Goldfield, Truthout. , , ,
On a cold Christmas night in 2021 in the picturesque mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina, The Asheville Blade journalist Veronica Coit sat in a police station waiting to be booked. A police officer motioned toward Coit and said, “She says she’s press.” The magistrate responded: “Is she real press?” “In that very moment, he could’ve decided that we were press, which we were. The magistrate has the legal right to say ‘no’ [to booking someone].” But the magistrate didn’t exercise that right. Both Coit and their colleague Matilda Bliss were processed for trespassing while covering the eviction of unhoused people at Aston Park in Asheville.

UK Police Detain Journalist Kit Klarenberg Over ‘Political Views’

May 31, 2023 News Desk, The Cradle. , , ,
UK counter-terrorism police detained journalist Kit Klarenberg upon his arrival in his home country from Belgrade, Serbia, on 17 May, subjecting him to an extended interrogation over his “political views” and his reporting. Klarenberg has written extensively for The Cradle, exposing London’s many covert operations in West Asia. According to The Grayzone, six plainclothes police were waiting for him outside his plane, promptly moving him to a back room and informing him of his detention under Schedule Three, Section Four of the 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Act.

New Media Project Brings Incarcerated Writers To The Forefront

May 10, 2023 Mansa Musa, The Real News Network. , , ,
The call for prison abolition has been popularized over the last decade of mass movements against police violence, many of which have operated under the banner of Black Lives Matter. But what does abolition mean, and who gets to define it? Thus far, much of the conversation has been steered and curated by mainstream media. A new initiative from Scalawag Magazine tentatively titled ‘Project Abolition’ seeks to disrupt the dominant narrative by platforming voices from within prisons themselves. Scalawag Editor-At-Large Da’Shaun Harrison joins Rattling the Bars to explain Project Abolition.
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