PressEthic

Unlike Janet Cooke or James Frey, literary superstar Dave Eggers is taking no risks of venturing into scandal territory with his newest book, ‘What is the What.’ Although his account of Sudanese refugees is researched with journalistic dedication (the story is based on lengthy interviews with refugee Valentino Achak Deng), Eggers has told the story from the perspective of a composite character and changed the order of certain events. Consequently, the book is sold in the fiction isle.

According to Caroline Moorehead of Slate, Eggers’ novel is nevertheless contributing to the journalistic dialogue.

Soon-to be all-powerful Google is turning to school classrooms to test out its free software service, the Associated Press reported Sunday.

Leroy Sievers, Writer of NPR’s ‘My Cancer’ blog, is expressing concern over something unusual: the number of hits on his page.

Sievens wrote on his site:

“The way we measure how we're doing in journalism is by counting the number of people who watch our work. There are a lot of people who look at the My Cancer blog. And that's good from a business standpoint. But when you stop and think about it, it's actually pretty sad.”

While online journalism provides a daily information source for millions of Americans, an equally crucial attribute of blogs is the public forum they have established, not just for other writers, but for those who stumble upon them as readers. While a personal letter to the editor usually disappeared into the void in pre-internet age, today’s blog and news readers can post an electronic response to a story and see it appear on the page within seconds.

Once again, journalism raises its head as the fourth estate.

Various news outlets are reporting that President Bush’s scheduled conference with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has been unexpectedly canceled. Most of the reports agree that a secret White House memo published today in the New York Times was a factor in Maliki’s decision to call off the meeting.

The White House, however, denies the memo’s alleged impact.

NPR reported today:

“Mr. Bush arrived in Jordan Wednesday evening, local time. He was to sit down with the Iraqi Prime Minister and the Jordanian King shortly thereafter. Instead came an announcement that the session would proceed without Maliki.

On November 19th, the Los Angeles Times reported that eleven large-scale thefts of free college newspapers have occurred throughout the fall. In the mini-society that college campuses reflect, these thefts show the most basic attempt to muffle the news.

O.J. Simpson may have killed two people, but at least he is bringing us all together, joked VH 1’s faux news commentary show, ‘Best Week Ever’ on Friday.

Once again, so-called “fake news” are telling us exactly how it is. The obviously appalling decision by Fox TV to broadcast an interview with O.J. Simpson about his latest publicity stunt, a book titled “If I did it,” has finally helped big players of competing networks to agree on something.

“The people behind this project ARE guilty of being shameless...and just plain disgusting,” said Katie Couric on Wednesday.

Couric’s opposition should not come as a shock. The fact that Bill O’Reilly is speaking against the Fox Corporation is, however, something to note. O’Reilly announced that he would boycott the book and called Fox’s program “a low point in American culture,” Maria Aspan of the New York Times reported today.

The blissful days of unsoiled public records are long gone. Unless one never attended a fraternity party during college or shared inside jokes via email, his or her most embarrassing moments could become public knowledge within seconds. Thanks to internet search engines, we have less of a control over our public legacies than ever before. An honor student’s plans of a bright future may take a hit if a potential employer comes across an internet diary or an album of spring break photos on Google.

All hope is not lost, however, for those of us who want to fence away our digitized private lives. According to NPR’s Morning Edition today, we can now hire a professional to neatly customize our Google legacies—and for a reasonable rate.

President Bush has never been applauded for his rhetorical skills, but his recent, contradicting statements about Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation have given way to particularly vocal criticism in the press.

Before the election, President Bush had announced that both Rumsfeld and Cheney would stay on for the rest of his term. Thus, during last Wednesday’s press conference, he was called to explain not only Rumsfeld’s departure itself, but the contradicting information that he had provided the media a few days prior.

When faced with the inevitable question, President Bush said that until the day of the press conference, the decision about Rumsfeld’s replacement had not yet been finalized. Furthermore, he had deliberately chosen not to announce such a major decision on the eve of the election.

Journalist Michael Weisskopf was sent to Iraq as an embedded journalist in late 2003. After less than a month on the war front, he lost his hand to a grenade. Waking up at the hospital, he realized that he had become a part of the battle he had merely been attempting to document.

Weisskopf recently documented his experiences in a book titled ‘Blood Brothers,’ and has vocally criticized the concept of embedded journalism.

In an NPR commentary on November 2nd, Weisskopf recounted his experience:

“For 20 days I had patrolled Baghdad with U.S. soldiers. Once I grabbed the grenade, I crossed the line from observer to participant. Now I was being asked to supply battlefield intelligence, a dubious milestone for a reporter engaged in what is called embedding. The Bush administration had invented the concept -- a policy that paid off in almost universally favorable press coverage. No complaints came from reporters who always want unfettered access to whomever they are covering.”

One of my college professors once remarked that in a world where the pace is faster and technology rules, a so-called “third place”—that communal haven between work and home—has disappeared from our daily lives. While the town tavern used to play a crucial role in the exchange of opinions, the corner bar of the 21st century usually remains a somber place until it fills up on the weekends. Rather than being the everyday norm, places where everyone knows your name have become charming novelties of an era gone by.

The third place has, arguably, shifted into the cyberspace where faces are unknown and the population seemingly infinite. Political chatter that was previously confined to coffee shops and bars now takes place in an intangible medium where the narcissist in all of us has a chance to speak to a wide audience. We may physically have isolated ourselves in our move from bar counters to keyboards, but the real opportunity to affect the world beyond our communities makes us feel all the more powerful.

Thanks to constantly updated news web sites, our concept of the news cycle has sped up from hours to mere seconds. The internet has consequently triggered a radical change in the nature of media competition. According to Donna Shaw in the October/November edition of the American Journalism Review, this accelerated cycle has especially influenced the culture of news scoops.

Shaw has framed her story around a June, 2006 Denver Post article on the drunk driving arrest of Pete Coors, tycoon of Coors Beer. Instead of holding the story for its print edition, the publication decided to first publish the scoop on its web site.

“It's not so long ago that such a decision would have been deemed heresy. The Post, traditionalists would have exclaimed, had foolishly "scooped itself."

More than merely an example of student activism, recent protest at Gallaudet University could also illustrate the influence of bloggers in an ever-changing world of print journalism.

Blogger and Gallaudet graduate Ricky Taylor calls himself “arguably the most controversial deaf blogger in America,” reported National Public Radio on October 25th. Taylor claims the traffic on his site to have quadrupled since the protests began.

“Protesters demanding the resignation of the new president at Gallaudet get much of their information from Taylor and dozens of other deaf bloggers. Deaf people rely heavily on e-mail and the Web,” said Joseph Shapiro of NPR.

According to this Tuesday’s Washington Post, the United States is deteriorating in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index, put out each year by Reporters without Borders. The United States slipped from last year’s 44th place to 53rd. The rankings are based on a set of 50 questions, pertaining to press freedom, that are asked of media representatives, researchers, human rights activists and other individuals in each country.

Countries where the freedom of the press is notoriously limited, including North Korea, Cuba, Burma and China, did not advance in the rankings. The worst ranking of 168 belongs to North Korea.

A high school student in Sacramento, California, was tracked down by federal agents after posting an anti-Bush image on her myspace page, CNN reported this morning.

14-year old Julia Wilson’s page featured a photo of the President with a crudely drawn knife stabbing his hand, a slanted red line (the universal sign for ‘anti’) running across his face and a “kill Bush”-caption on top of the page.

“I understand that I went too far but teenage emotions are at a peak, and one day I decided to make a myspace page that just went over the line,” Julia said in an interview with CNN.

The New York Times reported today on the recent drop of CBS News behind NBC and ABC. Couric has, however, improved CBS's ratings from last year. Whether the situation should be considered a disappointment or a win for the network, Couric's own impact in the news world is open to much speculation.