What to the what?! Can this be true?

Today, NPR is introducing staffers to a new Ethics Handbook that has been in the works for more than a year and illustrates how the organization is taking steps to safeguard against some of the ethical dilemmas it’s faced in the past.

So, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Does it uphold truth-telling and real journalism or codify cowardly FOX-emulating “he said, she said” propaganda?

Here’s what Jay Rosen has to say about it:

In my view the most important changes are these passages: #

In all our stories, especially matters of controversy, we strive to consider the strongest arguments we can find on all sides, seeking to deliver both nuance and clarity. Our goal is not to please those whom we report on or to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth.

and…. #

At all times, we report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly.

With these words, NPR commits itself as an organization to avoid the worst excesses of “he said, she said” journalism. It says to itself that a report characterized by false balance is a false report. It introduces a new and potentially powerful concept of fairness: being “fair to the truth,” which as we know is not always evenly distributed among the sides in a public dispute. #

Maintaining the “appearance of balance” isn’t good enough, NPR says. “If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side…” we have to say so. When we are spun, we don’t just report it. “We tell our audience…” This is spin! (Update: The new policy is already having an effect.) #

Wow. If this isn’t a mirage, it’s the best news I’ve heard all year.

When I checked my e-mail this afternoon, I saw this:

Kayvan Sabehgi, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, is in intensive care with a lacerated spleen after being beaten by police close to the Occupy Oakland camp.

Sabehgi, 32, is the second Iraq war veteran to be hospitalised following involvement in Oakland protests. Another protester, Scott Olsen, suffered a fractured skull on 25 October.

From his hospital bed, Sabehgi told the UK’s Guardian newspaper he had been walking alone along 14th Street in central Oakland, and not in the area where most clashes were happening, when he was attacked by a group of cops in front of him. They told him to move, even though there was no place to where he could move; then, as he asked one of them “Why are you doing this?” another one came up and hit him in his arm and legs and back with his baton, after which he was gang-tackled, arrested, and thrown into a jail where he spent the night curled up on the floor of his cell in horrific vomit-inducing pain, without any medical treatment until after bail was made for him late Thursday afternoon and he still couldn’t stand up, much less walk out of his filthy cell.

I then turned on CBS News to see if they’d have anything on this poor gentleman. No, they did not. Instead, they had a story on how the “black bloc” crowd was trying to “hijack” the protests.

I then checked the front pages of Google and Yahoo. Nothing on Google, and a link to this story from the British news agency Reuters with the link header making it sound like Sabeghi was somehow at fault. (See the screen shots above for proof.) I checked Google News and found (as the third accompanying screen shot shows) that the cites were composed of the Guardian article, the Reuters article, an Al Jazeera story and a Russia Today story, and local Bay Area TV news source KGO: Read the rest of this entry →

A new poll was released showing what previous poll after previous poll had shown: that the more Americans learn about Occupy Wall Street, the more they like it – and that they like it a lot more than they like the Koch-Armey-run Tea Party wing of the GOP.

This may be why the One Percenters and their media and security servants are stepping up their smear campaigns.

For instance: FOX trumpets this story: “‘Occupy Oakland’ Radical Hit By Car After Refusing to Let Driver Leave”

Here’s what really happened. From the Oakland Tribune (which is by no means liberal): Read the rest of this entry →

Progressives across the country have been bemoaning the quality of coverage of Occupations by the mainstream media in regional markets. It seems that’s it’s been difficult for many of the Occupiers to make themselves heard in their local media.

This hasn’t been a problem for the folks of Occupy MN — at least, not one they haven’t been able to surmount. Consider the clever, widely reported videos recently made by Nick Espinosa and friends touting Occupy Minnesota’s efforts on behalf of foreclosure victim Ruth Murman. For far less than the cost of running a TV or radio ad even once, even in the local media, the OccupyMN folks have with their Murman videos managed to capture the imaginations — and the news cycles — of the various mainstream print, TV, and radio outlets. This is a triumph of the concept of “earned media”, without the interference of “cool seekers” who see the Occupy movement mostly as the next new shiny thing. Read the rest of this entry →

Well, my, my. Just call me Lisbeth Salander, because my tweaking Keith Olbermann with a set of Katyusha-rocket Tweets concerning his shabby treatment of Joe McGinniss seems to have kicked his veritable hornet’s nest of an ego right where it counts. (See also the video above.) Read the rest of this entry →

The New York Post, Rupert Murdoch’s chief American tabloid enterprise (yes, I know, the Wall Street Journal is still technically a broadsheet even after he bought it, but still), and purveyor of stinky turds posing as journalism, dropped a particularly, um, fragrant one the other day:

A well-respected lawyer in the state Attorney General’s Office spends her days toiling in securities fraud — and her nights moonlighting as a dominatrix, The Post has learned.

Alisha Smith, 36, who dresses demurely as a buttoned-down prosecutor, turns up the heat when she becomes perky persecutor “Alisha Spark,” a nom de dom she uses when she performs at S&M events for pay, according to a fetish source.

“They pay her to go to the events. She dominates people, restrains them and whips them,” the fetish source said.

[...]

Yesterday, she was removed from her duties — for which she earns $78,825 annually — after The Post inquired about her saucy S&M lifestyle.

“The employee has been suspended without pay, effective immediately, pending an internal investigation,” said a spokesman for state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

(Of course, if Smith and her boss were Republicans, she’d still be on the job, just like dominatrix customer Diaper Dave Vitter is still on the job — his “job” per his oil-industry bosses being to kill solar energy. But I digress.) Read the rest of this entry →

That sound you just heard was millions of Americans saying “WHAT?!?”

Keith Olbermann just signed off MSNBC for good — and already folks are wondering if Comcast is behind this.

From the Guardian.co.uk: Keith Olbermann abruptly fired by NBC

Keith Olbermann, the controversial MSNBC cable news host, has his contract abruptly terminated by parent company NBC

Olbermann had two years of a four year contract remaining, worth an estimated $30m, and was the network’s highest rated personality, responsible in large part for MSNBC’s orientation as a liberal, Democratic-leaning channel.

[...]

The Associated Press reported that Phil Griffin, MSNBC’s president, would not comment on Olbermann’s sudden departure. But a spokesman did say that the acquistion of NBC Universal by cable and telecoms giant Comcast, which received regulatory approval this week, had nothing to do with the decision.

From Business Insider: So Why Did MSNBC Just Dump Keith Olbermann? Hint: COMCAST

Why now?
Bill Carter reports at the NYT that Olbermann “came to an agreement with NBC’s corporate management late this week to settle his contract and step down.”

“Late this week” suggests yesterday or today.

[...]

Next question: Is Comcast cleaning house? And if so, will Olbermann enabler MSNBC president Phil Griffin be next? And if so who will replace him?

What do you think?

photo: the euskadi 11 via Flickr

Late last week, worldwide media emperor Rupert Murdoch must have breathing copious sighs of relief. Andy Coulson, currently the main mouthpiece of the UK’s Tory Prime Minister, David Cameron, seemingly managed to escape the News of the World phone-hacking scandal without a scratch:

British prosecutors said Friday that there was not enough evidence to bring charges against Andy Coulson, the communications adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron, stemming from allegations that he had approved a scheme to break into the voice-mail boxes of Prince William and other celebrities during Mr. Coulson’s time as editor of the British tabloid News of the World.

News of the World is, of course, part of the Murdoch media empire. And Coulson was (is?) one of Murdoch’s more important employees. They all must have been quite happy last Friday.

Well, their happiness didn’t last very long:

Lawyers have secured explosive new evidence linking one of the News of the World‘s most senior editorial executives to the hacking of voicemail messages from the phones of Sienna Miller, Jude Law and their friends and employees.

In a document lodged in the high court, the lawyers also disclose evidence that the hacking of phones of the royal household was part of a scheme commissioned by the newspaper and not simply the unauthorised work of its former royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, acting as a “rogue reporter”, as it has previously claimed.

[...]

The document claims [News of the World's private investigator Glenn] Mulcaire’s handwritten notes imply that the news editor of the NoW, Ian Edmondson, instructed him to intercept Miller’s voicemail and that the operation also involved targeting her mother, her publicist and one of her closest friends as well as Law, her former partner, and his personal assistant. During the operation Mulcaire obtained confidential data held by mobile phone companies in relation to nine different phone numbers, the notes reveal.

The document, which has been released to the Guardian by the high court, suggests that the hacking of the two actors was part of a wider scheme, hatched early in 2005, when Mulcaire agreed to use “electronic intelligence and eavesdropping” to supply the paper with daily transcripts of the messages of a list of named targets from the worlds of politics, royalty and entertainment.

The new evidence explicitly contradicts the account of the News of the World and its former editor Andy Coulson, who is now chief media adviser to the prime minister. The paper and Coulson have always claimed that the only journalist involved in phone hacking was Goodman, who was jailed with Mulcaire in January 2007. Ian Edmondson is the fourth of Coulson’s journalists to be implicated in the affair since Goodman was convicted.

It gets even better:  . . . Read the rest of this entry →

I’ll be having a special guest this Saturday morning at 6:45 FDL time (9:45 Eastern) — Jay Weiner of MinnPost, who will be hanging out in the comments section waiting to take your questions about what’s happening in the recount of the Minnesota governor’s race.

Jay is no stranger to FDL: In fact, he was just here for a Halloween Book Salon, talking about his new book This Is Not Florida, which ironically enough is about the last big recount in Minnesota, the recount of the 2008 Al Franken and Norm Coleman race for Coleman’s Senate seat.

Jay can’t stay long — he can only hang around until 9:30 or so — so get your questions in right away!

If anyone has wondered if there was anything that could be done to stop the corporatist monster that is Rupert Murdoch, it looks like we now have our answer.

A long-simmering wiretap scandal involving Murdoch publications, high-ranking Tories, wiretapped royals, and allegedly bought-off/stitched-up Metropolitan Police, has finally been busted wide open — not because of Scotland Yard legwork, but because of lawsuits filed by some of the victims of the wiretapping.

The police deny that they’re deeply in bed with News Corp., but at least one of their own, Brian Paddick, is suing over what he and others say are Scotland Yard’s efforts to hide the wiretapping:

A lawsuit alleging a police cover-up of phone hacking has been launched by one of Scotland Yard’s own former senior officers, Brian Paddick, together with the former Labour minister Chris Bryant.

The former deputy prime minister John Prescott and at least one other person are shortly expected to join the action, which has the potential to force open some of the Metropolitan police’s locked files.

The claim for judicial review filed today accuses assistant Met commissioner John Yates of making misleading statements to parliament and the public, and the police of failing to carry out a proper investigation.

How bad is this scandal? A prominent Tory, Christopher Montgomery, explains how the arrogance of his party’s leadership in refusing to honestly address the affair is only fanning the flames that will soon lead to a firestorm capable of toppling the fragile Tory-LibDem coalition, as well as the public’s trust in public institutions that are supposed to be immune from the blandishments of rich men like Murdoch and his clique.

Watch this space. There will be more to come.