Newsworthiness

It is a sad day. Indian media from Mumbai and the Southern India made jokes in their editorials on Saurav, West Bengal (Indian State) residents and the Indian communists. They call Saurav’s attitude "Dadagiri" – popularly known as a self-proclaimed leader. They allowed their borrowed Australian coach to show middle finger at all Kolkata residents because they support Saurav. They made jokes of the...

As with lots of pressing issues people grapple with, complaints about the media invite a partisan clash: liberal vs. conservative; Democrat vs. Republican. Or some other "us" against a readily targeted "them." But maybe there’s a more useful, even unifying mind-set: to see the media delivery system for news, entertainment and other programming as being skewed in a cross-the-board, nondoctrinaire...

NY1 News, the local news channel for the cable customers of Time Warner in New York, boasts on its Web site that its all-digital newsroom is "one of the most advanced newsgathering operations in the world." But last week the site was not much of a showcase for the channel's technological prowess. Visitors to NY1.com seeking news about the city's transit strike found a stark black-and-white page...

When Islam is covered in the German media, discussion frequently mixes political, social and religious issues. Debate on Islamic topics can only gain in sophistication when more Muslims are involved in producing content. German journalism has developed more sensibility and increased the knowledge about Islam and Muslim culture, some experts say. In late October, the evening broadcast on Channel 3...

The 1960s was the "anything goes" decade; a time when LSD, hippies, rock 'n' roll and free love were youth's reactions to the assassinations of its leaders and a war in Vietnam. It was a time when a few journalists wanted to be hip and cover the cultural revolution from the inside. They believed that the standard method of reporting -- "get the facts, get both sides, and keep your opinions to...

As with lots of pressing issues people grapple with, complaints about the media invite a partisan clash: liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican. Or some other "us" against a readily targeted "them." But maybe there's a more useful, even unifying mind-set: to see the media delivery system for news, entertainment and other programming as being skewed in an across-the-board...

The fate of the printed press will rest in your hands. Or rather, at your fingertips. In fact, you are becoming part of this media shift as you read this article -- not in print, but online. According to the latest reports from the Newspaper Association of America, newspaper readership continues to drop, going from 62.4 percent in 1990 to 54.1 percent in 2003. In an extreme case, the San Francisco...

For years, sizing up the media's shortcomings has been a popular if fuzzy sport, full of subjective observations, grand generalizations, and polemical abstractions. Al Franken, for example, is happy to tell us that "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot," but he never tells us precisely how big, or how idiotic. Ditto for Bill O'Reilly, who warns us of the media's anti-Christmas bias. But he never gives...

The New York Times first debated publishing a story about secret eavesdropping on Americans as early as last fall, before the 2004 presidential election. But the newspaper held the story for more than a year and only revealed the secret wiretaps last Friday, when it became apparent a book by one of its reporters was about to break the news, according to journalists familiar with the paper's...

The New York Times' revelation yesterday that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct domestic eavesdropping raised eyebrows in political and media circles, for both its stunning disclosures and the circumstances of its publication. In an unusual note, the Times said in its story that it held off publishing the 3,600-word article for a year after the newspaper's...