Yesterday, after the news broke of an extensive investigative report by Brian Deer, a British journalist, CNN’s Anderson Cooper took it from there and completed the evisceration of huckster Andrew Wakefield, whose infamous 1998 study supposedly linking autism to the MMR vaccine was retracted last year by the journal Lancet. Cooper doesn’t mince words, and…Continue Reading…
Ok, everybody who’s shocked by the news of this internal email communication raise their hands. Fox News is slanted? And that slant is being enforced by its producers? Look, it’s always good when stuff like this comes to light, if only to further puncture the absurd facade that Fox is actually [cough, cough] “fair and…Continue Reading…
The WikiLeaks release of 250,000 diplomatic cables continues to discomfit many journalists. In his recent media column, David Carr writes that WikiLeaks does not share the same values or objectives [as a traditional news organization]. Mr. Assange and the site’s supporters see transparency as the ultimate objective, believing that sunshine and openness will deprive bad…Continue Reading…
George Monbiot bores into the reporting (past and present) of the UK’s David Rose, who seems to have a stellar record of getting big stories wrong. But Monbiot should have spread the blame around, because as Daniel Okrent noted in his own castigation of the NY Times’ WMD coverage in the run-up to the Iraq…Continue Reading…
I’ve been teaching journalism at NYU since 2005. I’m an adjunct there, and I usually teach one or two courses a year. It’s one of the most professionally gratifying things I do. Nothing pleases me more than when a student gets that rush of excitement from a story he or she is working on for…Continue Reading…
UPDATE: Joe Romm and Brad Johnson respond in the comment thread. If you’re a climate blogger who often plays up the most potentially catastrophic consequences of global warming, and a new sociological study finds that “dire messages warning of the severity of global warming and its presumed dangers can backfire,” what do you do? You…Continue Reading…
My struggle to distinguish between a “climate skeptic” and “climate denier” continues. In July, I sought some clarity on these terms, which triggered over 500 comments and little agreement on an acceptable distinction between the two labels. That should come as no surprise. Do you know any climate skeptics who are fine with being called…Continue Reading…
Jon Stewart is obviously striking a nerve. Last week, he rankled liberals. This week, the top exec at Fox News unloads on Stewart: He hates conservative views. He hates conservative thoughts. He hates conservative verbiage. He hates conservatives…He’s crazy. If it wasn’t polarized, he couldn’t make a living. He makes a living by attacking conservatives…Continue Reading…
Great column today by Thomas Friedman, recounting a whopper of a story that went viral until CNN’s Anderson Cooper debunked it. This is how you properly debunk a story, or a claim (as opposed to a person). Not by declaring again and again that someone is the most debunked person in the universe.
In the past year various panel reports on “climategate” and the IPCC have called for greater “transparency” in climate science. But what about transparency in journalism? Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor and influential media blogger, has been calling for it for years and does so again in the wake of the Keith Olbermann suspension: …self-respecting…Continue Reading…