Feral Beast: Journalists' recent work examined before embeds

Monday, August 24, 2009

Journalists' recent work examined before embeds | Stars and Stripes

Vetting the clips of foreign correspondents before okaying an embed assignment has become standard practice. Unsurprisingly, positive spin for the military is the mission.

According to a piece in Stars and Stripes, not a hypercritical medium, American public affairs officials in Afghanistan admit that reporters are scrutinized before getting a goahead.â€Journalists' recent work examined before embeds | Stars and Stripes

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Anonymous said...: INteresting that this scoop led to the cancellation of that contract.
http://www.truthout.org/090209U?n; September 3, 2009 at 1:03 AM

Feral Beast? Try Lemming

If the press were an animal, what kind of animal would it be? I’ve got my answer. A legion of lemmings, furry and well-intentioned, but ultimately condemned by their nature to follow each other mindlessly off a tall cliff, over the Paris Hilton peak or into the Invade Iraq crevasse. The words “feral beast” certainly wouldn’t come to mind. It’s not particularly accurate or particularly evocative. But that is how the departing British prime minister, Tony Blair, sees journalists: as malicious tormentors who have tried to tear him limb from limb.

--Gal Beckerman of the Columbia Journalism Review

“Journalism is a form of cartography,” write Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach of Pew. “It creates a map for citizens to navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make a less reliable map.”

"Journalism is good at solving small problems or taking small bites of a big problem. It’s not good at solving big problems." Adapted from David Simon, creator of The Wire.

Retrospective : five decades of journalism as reported by CJR

Fake AP Stylebook reminds us: Unless you're doing a story on the Muppets, you are not a gonzo journalist.

"The once idealized information superhighway has become a parking lot of error, misinformation, rumor and junk." Poynter Institute, advocating a broader definition of who is a journalist.