While we were getting down to the wire on the John Kerry Silver Star medal story at ABC News’s “Night-line,” the recent painful “60 Minutes’” debacle over the President’s war record story gave fresh meaning to an old rule, “Thou … Read more
Journalism is no more in a survival mode today than it was 52 years ago when Louis Lyons and my Nieman classmates worried about how a compliant and objective press was helping Joe McCarthy savage the body politic. Attitude? … Read more
Certainly journalism will survive. Indeed, it could even thrive as a result of today’s very real challenges. Journalists need neither fear nor denounce the proliferation of punditry and attitude. Rather, as the media landscape teems ever more vigorously with partisanship … Read more
Journalism often appears to thrill to the sense of being in crisis, but pressures on it now truly seem to fit the bill. On one side, it’s screwed down tighter than ever; on the other, the lid has blown off. Read more
FOIA for the FOIA logs. Not only do they contain clues to stories, but also reporters will discover fascinating/ entertaining requests. One CIA log, for example, showed a requester had asked for “radar and visual sightings of UFO’s.” The federal … Read more
Today journalists are observing a growing culture of secrecy in Washington and the use of “national security” to justify restricted access and sometimes complete closure throughout all areas of government. Organizations representing their interests have taken initial steps toward pushing … Read more
