rovingreporter Looking at War
Fox News in Haiti: not journalism
It didn’t take long. There it was on Fox News – the Geraldo Rivera team exploiting the power of the media to bring a “story” to the U.S. audience.
It was all so contrived, it was appalling. On television from the U.S., they had the future parents of two Haitian orphans. In Haiti, part of Geraldo’s [...]
Get to the Point
For weeks now I have been reading The Washington Post and wondering what is going on with their leads. What happened to the hard news leads that informed the reader in a quick paragraph? Instead, feature leads have taken over — and while they have their place and I have written some of my own [...]
Earthquakes and Journalists
Haiti’s tragedy would have eclipsed in a roar of silence if it were not for the work of hundreds of journalists that risked their own lives to respond. I hope the coverage remains good, and reaches to become better than good – to not only inform on the details of personal stories but also on [...]
BOB WOODWARD: USE ANONYMOUS SOURCES
I met Bob Woodward today. I wasn’t particularly star-struck, but it was good to have my beliefs about the importance of journalism confirmed by someone who has had such an impact on U.S. journalism.
The conversation — between Woodward and about 10 of us students — turned to the use of anonymous sources, something which has [...]
FREELANCERS AND WAR
“If you happen to be in Herat, we would take some stories,” one of the editors of the Christian Science Monitor told me back in the late 1990s. The Taliban were taking over Afghanistan, and there was a lot of interest in coverage, but there were few newspapers who were ready to shell out the [...]
BEST/WORST ONLINE MEDIA ON OBAMA’S SPEECH
President Barack Obama’s announcement Dec. 1 that the U.S. will send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan was covered on all traditional media. What was interesting to see was how this reporting was augmented on almost every online site with additional information, mostly presented through video interviews.
Time magazine’s story on Yahoo was complemented by three [...]
THE FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE
Foreign Policy magazine writer Joshua Keating has a great blog this week – I didn’t get a chance to use it over Thanskgiving, but it will work for the next round of family gatherings: “Running the Table: How to beat your uncle in a foreign policy debate at Thanksgiving dinner.”
To statements like (and I can [...]
LOOK AROUND
Online publications are not the only ones celebrating multi-media. Many human rights and advocacy groups — who are good resources for journalists around the world — are joining in, and some are producing excellent work.
Human Rights Watch has a Multimedia section that showcases powerful videos, audio slideshows and photo essays on human rights abuses or [...]
IT’S ALL ABOUT US
Suddenly, it’s fun to be a journalist again. Yeah, I know it’s a drag being unemployed … but just look at what’s out there: JournoTwit (I have no idea if the pun is intended, but I laughed anyway) is a web-based Twittter client that aims “to fulfill the needs of journalists, bloggers and media professionals” [...]
KILLER TWEETS
Just as the blogosphere revealed bitter ideological divisions (conservative and liberal) among Americans in their reactions to the killings at Ft. Hood last week, so did the Twitter world. A quick search for #FtHood showed how the mass shootings quickly became a conduit for everyone’s convictions and presumptions: from decrying gun control laws to calling for an immediate execution [...]
