Team Topics and Links
Please follow these instructions, rather than posting to your individual recitations:
By 11:59.59 p.m. Monday, Team Member #1 for the teams presenting Feb. 23 or 24 must post here:
A. What topic/story/event in the news your team will cover.
B. Links to the specific coverage of this story that each of your team members will discuss. Your classmates will read these stories ahead of time and come to class prepared for your presentation and able to ask intelligent questions.
Opinion Journalism: Advocacy
Preparing for this week’s topical lectures, read Peter Schorsch’s insights into the recent case of a Tampa Bay-area TV station’s decision to take a decisive stand—”deliberately blurring the line dividing reporting from advocacy”—on a news story of great importance to its community: the impending draconian cuts to USF. What do you think?
R.I.P., Anthony Shadid
Anthony Shadid was the best at the good that journalists do. He won Pulitzer prizes for International Reporting in 2004 and 2010 and had been nominated for the 2012 prize, which will be announced in April, about the time his memoir, House of Stone, is scheduled to be released. He was shot in Ramallah in 2002, then was among four New York Times journalists kidnapped by the Libyan government last March. One of his former editors said: ”He changed the way we saw Iraq, Egypt, Syria over the last, crucial decade. There is no one to replace him.” Anthony Shadid died last night from an asthma attack while covering the conflict inside Syria. He was just 43 and was married to Nada Bakri (also a Times reporter) and had two young children. We hope you’ll spend a few minutes reading Mr. Shadid’s work to learn how he tried to help the world to understand the humanity buried in the rubble of war.
Lands of liberty?
Ahead of tomorrow’s Face to Face Conversation with journalists Kris Hundley and Kathleen Flynn of the Tampa Bay Times, please make sure you’ve read the F2F Handout in ANGEL Lessons, now in MSWord format to better enable linking.
And here’s a timely update: The nongovernmental organization (NGO) Reporters Without Borders last week issued its 2011-12 index of press freedom. Finland and Norway tied atop the list; Turkmenistan, North Korea, and Eritrea (dead last) were the least free places to be a journalist.
The U.S. dropped 27 places because of the government’s harsh treatment of journalists covering the Occupy protests. That left the U.S. tied in the ranking of press freedom for 47th place with Romania — which, just 23 years ago, was suffering under the brutal totalitarian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu — and Argentina — where, into the 1980s, dissidents were being routinely “disappeared” and which, until five years ago, had sent its soldiers to train at the U.S. DoD institution known as the School of Assassins.
India, where journalists Hundley and Flynn traveled to report on the deadly “Testing Grounds,” is No. 131 on the list for press freedom.
In today’s media world, a scoop (a breaking news item) is measured by minutes instead of days.
But what is really more important: Being first or being accurate?
Saturday night a few journalists suffered their worst nightmare. Several news organizations reported that former Penn State coach Joe Paterno had died. The family says this is incorrect.
Locally NBC-2 send out an email blast at 9:07 p.m. saying Paterno had died at age 85.
Then 25 minutes later, they sent out what we call a retraction, saying the first report was untrue.
The Associated Press explained the blunder that CBSSports.com made on the subject in the following four graphs.
Paterno remained connected to a ventilator Saturday night, individuals close to Paterno’s family told the Washington Post, and his family was debating taking him off the ventilator Sunday.
After CBSSports.com reported that Paterno had died, Scott Paterno, Joe’s son, and the family spokesman denied the reports.
“CBS report is wrong – Dad is alive but in serious condition. We continue to ask for prayers and privacy during this time,” Scott Paterno wrote on Twitter.
CBSSports.com later said that it was relying on information from Onward State, a Penn State blog. Onward State retracted its report, saying “We were confident when we ran with it, and are still trying to figure out where our process failed. We apologize sincerely for error.” Onward State’s managing editor announced his resignation later Saturday.
Student Editor takes the honorable road after Tweets about Joe Paterno’s death
Onward State Editor explains how false report came about
Student Editor gets support over resignation
Here is CBSsportsline’s apology
The lesson that can be taken away from Saturday night’s unnecessary rush to be first is that accuracy is the ultimate goal of all journalist. When we are not accurate we lose credibility. And when a journalist loses his or her credibility they should look for another line of work.
What are your thoughts?
Here is what others are saying:
Here is a terrific timeline of how the false reporting started and how news organizations regrouped
Poynter’s Craig Silverman: False Paterno death reports highlight journalists’ hunger for glory
Washington Post: Social media sets off firestorm of false reports that Joe Paterno died
It’s not the first time in the last year that the news media have erroneously reported a public figure’s death.In January 2011, when a gunman in Tucson, Arizona, killed six people and wounded more than 12 others, several major media outlets, including CNN, reported that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had died.UPDATE TO STORY
CBSsportsline.com fires editor responsible for posting false report of Paterno’s death
They ought to give Iowa a chance
One week ago in class, I mentioned that a serious discrepancy in the voting results of the Iowa caucuses had been reported. Turns out, some results will never be certified. Turns out, Santorum defeated Romney in the certified results. Given that the news media narrative, after Iowa and including New Hampshire, has been that Romney is on an unstoppable roll, what does this news portend for a fair democratic process — and for how and whether we can trust the news media’s rush to judgment?
Debate over HDR photo
At the end of Tuesday’s class, I referred to the controversy over a photo manipulated and published by the Washington Post. Poynter.org has a good overview and a shorter take on experts’ divergent views. Too glib to say, merely, “Get used to it.” What does it portend for the future of reliable, credible information? What do you think?
No accounting for taste, judgment
Did the associate editor of South Carolina’s capital city newspaper, who endorsed Jon Huntsman in the GOP primary race there, really liken his withdrawal today to being spurned by a male lover who suddenly informs you he’s gay? According to the U.K. Guardian, she did so in an interview.
Unreliable information on the web
Relevant to Tuesday’s lecture—and the whole semester: A blogger points out the life of a lie across platforms. It’s sports (and it’s Spurrier, innocent this time), but still worth a look.
Don’t stop now!
For those of you who are truly interested in becoming increasingly critical consumers of news, here are couple of items you should read and contemplate, in your “down” time. They may even help stimulate your thinking about the final letter essay and team report. Jim Romenesko has aggregated and curated a debate involving the Harrisburg, Pa., paper, which has been way out in front on the PSU-Sandusky story, and the NYTimes, which has kept PSU loyalists on the story. Great ethics debate. And for those still wondering about the reliability of information to be found on the Wall Street Journal‘s edit-oped pages, there’s this disturbing development.
