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 . '/' . substr('9780385517218',-6,3) . '/' . '9780385517218' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Gore Vidal
$26.00
By William Pfaff
$16.50
$23
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By David Sirota — Thousands of miles from the San Fernando Valley’s seedy studios, the adult entertainment business is alive and panting in Haiti. Like any X-rated content, this smut is all flesh and no substantive plot.
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AP / Matthew Putney
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To answer our own headline question: It remains to be seen whether this year’s Pulitzer Prize committee members think so, but the editors at the National Enquirer apparently believe that their tabloid’s coverage of John Edwards’ extramarital affair has a shot at journalistic glory. They’ve thrown their reports on the former Democratic presidential candidate’s liaison in for official consideration among the submissions for 2009.
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Flickr / Joe Shlabotnik
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The New York Times’ website may get more traffic than just about any other news site in the country, but the paper is still struggling to pay its bills and announced Wednesday that it will move to a metered pay model. ... (continued)
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AP / Lawrence Jackson
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Giving the Drudge Report and Free Republic a little competition in the conservative Web space, former CNN pundit (see: “Crossfire”) and bow-tie enthusiast Tucker Carlson has launched his own site, the Daily Caller. That’s “the DC” for short—snappy, Mr. Carlson!
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AP / Adem Hadei
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By Chris Hedges — The state and the press work hard to keep the reality of war hidden. We rarely see images that capture the evil of war, what it does to young minds and bodies.
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By Ellen Goodman — There is something fitting about writing my last column on the first day of a new year. January, after all, is named for the Roman god of beginnings and endings. [Editor’s note: This is Ellen Goodman’s final column.]
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Flickr / Lunchbox
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The Nielsen Co. is putting Editor & Publisher to pasture after 125 years of covering the newspaper business. It’s a shot in the gut to journalists everywhere, many of whom got their start from the mag’s want ads. But the trade’s shoes have already been filled by commendable online publications, such as Romenesko and local efforts like LA Observed. (continued)
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youtube
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What to do when your business and the medium it’s printed on are disintegrating into pulp? Form a consortium, of course. Condé Nast, Hearst, Time, News Corp. and something called Meredith have banded together to crack this nut with a common digital format, shared innovation and maybe even a new gadget or two. (continued)
Posted on Dec 8, 2009
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By Ellen Goodman — Let it not be said that right-wing bloggers are encumbered by a sense of humor. Or a fact-checker.
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In a rare turnabout of camera and subject, “Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman talks with Truthdig’s Robert Scheer about the major inspirations and role models of her life, her life’s work, and how the ongoing crisis in journalism is really a crisis of truth. Updated
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AP / Kiichiro Sato
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By Chris Hedges — Will Tiger Woods finally talk to the police? Who will replace Oprah? We stand on the cusp of one of the most seismic events in human history and our obsessions revolve around the trivial and the absurd.
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In an interview with Sky News Australia, the News Corp. tycoon laid out his vision for the future of the news business, which bears little resemblance to the present state of the news business. Murdoch said he would soon begin charging for online content, block Google searches and ... (continued)
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kean.edu
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By Bill Boyarsky — I’ve been thinking of I.F. Stone while reading the growing stack of reports and essays giving recommendations on how to save the declining news business. The outrageous solution increasingly favored by the journalism establishment is one that Stone would have hated—turning to Washington for help.
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AP / Darko Bandic
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By Robert Fisk — For decades, Lebanese journalism has been applauded as the freest, most outspoken and most literate in the heavily censored Arab world. Alas, no more. The Lebanese media are being hit – like the rest of the world – by the Internet and falling advertising revenues. But this is Lebanon, where politics is always involved. Is something rotten in the state of the Lebanese press?
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Peter Richardson’s new book about the groundbreaking Ramparts magazine says the rag changed America. Truthdig arts and culture editor Kasia Anderson asks the author and former Ramparts Editor Robert Scheer, Truthdig’s editor-in-chief, why the magazine’s impact isn’t better remembered and what will take its place.
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Peter Richardson’s new book about the groundbreaking Ramparts Magazine says the rag changed America. Truthdig arts and culture editor Kasia Anderson asks the author and former Ramparts Editor Robert Scheer, Truthdig’s editor-in-chief, why its impact isn’t better remembered, and what will take its place.
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White House / Shealah Craighead
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The conservative New York Times columnist, Nixon speechwriter and college dropout lost a battle with pancreatic cancer Sunday. In his final opinion column for The Times, Safire wrote about mortality and his intention to reinvent himself at 75.
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Flickr / David Boyle
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President Obama says the kind of journalism done by newspapers is “absolutely critical to the health of our democracy” and he’s “happy to look at” proposals to save “fact-based reporting.” But don’t expect the newspaper-junkie-in-chief to break out the keys to the bailout vault anytime soon.
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Flickr / freegazaorg
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Haaretz’s Gideon Levy writes that the “cheap and harmful journalism” of the Swedish organ harvesting story has made life more difficult for opponents of the occupation: “The Israeli occupation is ugly enough without the contribution of Nordic fairy tales. ... [A]ny exaggeration in describing the occupation’s cruelty will ultimately damage the struggle against it.”
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Amy Goodman, Chris Hedges and Robert Scheer discuss the present and future of media with the global economic crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the health care debate raging on.
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Are we entering an age in which the electronic image, endowed with the ability to manufacture its own reality, is hurling us into a state of collective self-delusion? Welcome to a brave new post-literate world where we confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge.
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Amy Goodman, Chris Hedges and Robert Scheer discuss the present and future of media with the global economic crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the health care debate raging on.
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Amy Goodman and Robert Scheer discuss the present and future of media with the global economic crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the health care debate raging on.
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Flickr / squigglycircle
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Anna Politkovskaya was such a fine journalist, so brave in afflicting the comfortable, that she was shot. Probably by her political enemies, which included her government. She was the 13th journalistic critic of the government to be shot down by contract killers during Putin’s reign. After the first sham trial led to nothing, the Russian Supreme Court ordered a retrial of defendants in the case, a trial that is now under way and in a brief adjournment.
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By Marie Cocco — The greatest sorrow in marking Walter Cronkite’s death is the necessity of acknowledging that we have replaced his work ethic and wisdom with puffery and ideological pontification.
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© 2001 Reese Erlich
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By Reese Erlich — In the fall of 2002, Walter Cronkite agreed to be interviewed about the pending U.S. invasion of Iraq. That interview was never published. Looking back at the transcript seven years later, Walter’s views proved quite prescient. Here’s some of what he told me.
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AP / File
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One of the news industry’s longest-living legends, Walter Cronkite, died of cerebrovascular disease Friday at the age of 92. Over the course of his storied career as the anchor of CBS News, Cronkite covered some of the biggest events of the 20th century. He himself coined his famous and often-quoted sign-off line: “And that’s the way it is. ... ”
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Background: Flickr / Tracy O
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For a mere $250,000, lobbyists and captains of industry were invited to “an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of [Washington Post] CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth.” Invitees were promised unfettered access to the paper’s reporters as well as “key Obama administration and congressional leaders.”
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AP photo / Bebeto Matthews
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By Chris Hedges — The modern world, as Kafka predicted, has become a world where lies become true. And facts alone will be powerless to thwart the mendacity spun out through billions of dollars in corporate advertising, lobbying and control of traditional sources of information. The lines between artists, social activists and journalists have to be erased.
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By Ellen Goodman — Journalism is famously described as “the first rough draft of history.” But the history of this Iranian moment is a first, rough hailstorm of bits and bytes, tweets and texts. In the tweet of Mousavil388: “One Person=One Broadcaster.”
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discourse.net
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Being popular and Internet-savvy, writer Dan Froomkin surely holds a place in today’s struggling newspaper business that’s secure. At least that’s what you’d think. Instead, The Washington Post has fired him. The move removes one of the only mainstream commentators to criticize Barack Obama from the left.
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Thanks to the L.A. Press Club for acknowledging the excellent work of our writers with three Southern California Journalism Awards. Congratulations to Chris Hedges, who won Online Journalist of the Year and Best Online Column, and Scott Ritter, who took home an award for Best Online Feature. Continue reading for the full list of 12 Truthdig finalists and links to the winning and nominated articles.
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The “Daily Show’s” Jason Jones kicks the Gray Lady while she’s down with this uncompromising look at the day-old news business.
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White House / Archives
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Back in 1972 the FBI’s acting director gave a New York Times reporter the impression that the president was personally involved in Watergate, but the tip died a quick and historic death in the Times’ Washington Bureau, according to the reporter and editor involved. One went on to law school, the other took a long vacation and no one bothered to follow up.
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By David Sirota — Most newspaper postmortems insist that decreased ad revenues brought on by the Internet and the recession caused journalism’s problems, but a look at the vapid celebrity-obsessed pages of the nation’s ever-thinner rags tells a different story.
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Beverly Gage’s new book exhumes a nearly forgotten tale of class warfare—call it 9/16.
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denverpost.com
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The death knell has been sounded for the Rocky Mountain News, E.W. Scripps’ Denver-area newspaper, which is scheduled to close after Friday’s edition is churned out, no doubt signaling more mayhem to come in the old media world.
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Flickr / Aaron Escobar
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The Truthdig Podcast is back and better than ever. This week the panel tackles our obsession with imperfect athletes, the first days of the Obama administration and the decline of media. Special guest Megan Tady, campaign coordinator for Free Press, joins James Harris and Josh Scheer.
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radaronline.com
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A survey of stimulus coverage by Media Matters has found that watching TV news may actually shrink your brain. Well, that’s not fair, but it certainly won’t teach you much about stimulating the economy. That’s because the personalities that populate the airwaves—and not just Fox News—are given license to repeat untruths over and over again.
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Why does the Darfur violence arouse outrage but the slaughter of millions more in Congo does not? An indispensable new book by Gerard Prunier attempts an answer by combining cool analysis and scholarly dispassion without losing sight of the horror of its subject.
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White House / Ollie Atkins
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Two Truthdig contributors are under siege by an “independent historian” and The New York Times. If that sounds preposterous, just wait until you see what made it onto the front page. Last Sunday, the paper of record cited an unpublished article contending that historian Stanley Kutler deliberately altered transcripts of Nixon’s secret tapes in order to protect John Dean.
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AP photo / Sebastian Scheiner
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By Chris Hedges — The assault on Gaza exposed not only Israel’s callous disregard for international law but the gutlessness of the American press. Nearly all reporters were, as during the buildup to the Iraq war, pliant stenographers and echo chambers.
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AP photo / Abdel Kareem Hana
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By Chris Hedges — Israel will, from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. And the language of death is all the Palestinians will be able to speak back. The slaughter—let’s stop pretending this is a war—is empowering an array of radical Islamists inside and outside of Gaza.
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abc.go.com
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By G.W. Schulz, Center for Investigative Reporting —
The inaugural episode of ABC’s newest reality television series did exactly as producer Arnold Shapiro told viewers it would: unabashedly celebrated the Department of Homeland Security. It also failed in every conceivable way to critically examine the largest reorganization of the federal government since World War II.
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theatrum-belli.com
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Be it due to danger or the ever-present desire for security, the Israeli government has always found reason to forbid journalists to enter the Gaza Strip at times of “conflict.” The current brutal assault on Gaza is no different, but this time an association of journalists has filed a petition in the Israeli Supreme Court to demand access to the occupied territories.
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amazon.com
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A new book casts an illuminating spotlight on Colombia’s guerrilla war, fueled by cocaine profits and U.S. military aid.
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Flickr / Joe Shlabotnik
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On Monday, the paper of record published an e-mail from the mayor of Paris slamming Caroline Kennedy’s political maneuvering as “appalling.” Unfortunately, the Times failed to check whether the message was authentic—it wasn’t. Guess that explains all those articles by Nigerian princes.
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AP photo / Kevork Djansezian
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By Bill Boyarsky — I’m concerned about the uncertain future for journalists. Without them, who will “watchdog” politicians and bureaucrats, charity officials, cops, educators and the many others who help make our society run?
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By Joe Conason — Nearly every current poll shows that most Americans oppose federal assistance to the auto industry, but legislators should also consider how voters would feel if the nation suffered the full consequences of a cratering auto industry—and if those voters then found out that the facts were not quite what they seemed to be.
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Too Soon to Tell: The Case for Hope, Continued
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