Journalists with backbone are increasingly rare:
A popular comic strip that poked fun at the Rev. Jerry Falwell without incident one week ago was deemed too controversial to run over the weekend because this time it took a humorous swipe at Muslim fundamentalists.The Washington Post and several other newspapers around the country did not run Sunday’s installment of Berkeley Breathed’s “Opus,” in which the spiritual fad-seeking character Lola Granola appears in a headscarf and explains to her boyfriend, Steve, why she wants to become a radical Islamist.
Here’s the cartoon:
The always astute law prof Eugene Volokh adds:
As those who like to stress the importance of accommodating world Islam in various ways point out, there are a billion Muslims out there. But that cuts both ways: A faith that is this important in the world is an important subject of discussion, both in traditional academic and political debate and in that part of social debate that happens through humor and even the comics.I stress that I’m not speaking about legal rules; as I’ve argued before, cartoons that depict Mohammed should be as constitutionally protected as other cartoons, and newspaper decisions to reject whatever cartoons they want to reject should be constitutionally protected, too. But if I’m right in my analysis above, then it looks like certain media outlets are establishing or reinforcing a social norm that immunizes Islam and Muslims from a certain kind of commentary. And we as readers and writers should try to fight such a social norm, by criticizing those who are acting on it.
Fantastic essay on the joys of teaching. Good writing — starts slow then builds to a crescendo.
Great column from the PBS Ombudsman on the latest from Bill Moyers, who had some unkind words for Karl Rove last week:
When I asked PBS whether there are any other regular programs in which the host provides editorial opinion or informed analysis analogous to what Moyers does, the officials said, “There is no other program or host precisely analogous to Bill Moyers Journal/Bill Moyers but the hosts of other PBS talk and public affairs programs certainly express their opinions on occasion.
Well, not quite like Moyers.
Look, I’ve got no problem with Moyers being outspoken about his left-wing political views. But, if it’s truly “public” broadcasting, then a right-winger should have his own show too.
A 17-year-old hacker has broken the lock that ties Apple’s iPhone to AT&T’s wireless network, freeing the most hyped cell phone ever for use on the networks of other carriers, including overseas ones…The hack, which Hotz posted Thursday to his blog, is complicated and requires skill with both soldering and software. It takes him about two hours to perform. Since the details are public, it seems likely that a small industry may spring up to buy U.S. iPhones, unlock them and send them overseas.
Back when I was kid, this was the only hack I’d ever heard of.
This is the big elephant in the room:
More than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don’t care about the people they report on, a poll published Thursday showed.And poll respondents who use the Internet as their main source of news — roughly one quarter of all Americans — were even harsher with their criticism, the poll conducted by the Pew Research Center said.
More than two-thirds of the Internet users said they felt that news organizations don’t care about the people they report on; 59 percent said their reporting was inaccurate; and 64 percent they were politically biased.
I started work on my PhD in Public Communication this week. In addition to getting a full-time position teaching journalism, I’m also hoping to address how we teach journalism. Most of the academics I’ve encountered and the journalism textbooks that I read shrug off criticism of biased news coverage. I hope to change that.
From a NY Times article on questionable edits made to Wikipedia entries:
And The New York Times Company is among those whose employees have made, among hundreds of innocuous changes, a handful of questionable edits. A change to the page on President Bush, for instance, repeated the word “jerk” 12 times. And in the entry for Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, the word “pianist” was changed to “penis.”“It’s impossible to determine who did any of these things,” said Craig R. Whitney, the standards editor of The Times. “But you can only shake your head when you see what was done to the George Bush and Condoleezza Rice entries.”
Ah, the New York Times. The pinnacle of journalism.
Saw my hero, Julio Franco, yesterday. He’s going to turn 49 next week but hasn’t let his age keep him from his passion — baseball. I wrote about him last year when he became the oldest baseball player to hit a home run.
Franco’s playing for the Atlanta Braves’ Single-A, minor league affiliate in Rome, Georgia. He’ll likely rejoin the major league Braves on Sept. 1 when the rosters expand to 40-man teams.
In yesterday’s game, Franco hit an RBI single for the first run of a four-run inning. Not bad for 48 years old. I hope he helps the Braves get to the World Series this fall. Of course, Franco says this won’t be his last year — he dreams of playing at age 50. I’m sure he’ll do it.
Here’s the list of the Top 10 newspaper Web sites, according to the Bivings Group:
1.) The New York Times
2.) The Washington Post
3.) USA Today
4.) Houston Chronicle
5.) The Denver Post
6.) The Knoxville News Sentinel
7.) The Fresno Bee
8.) Austin American-Statesman
9.) The (Nashville) Tennessean
10.) San Jose Mercury News
Not sure who the Bivings Group is — but they make great Top 10 lists.
The name reminds me of the Bivans Brothers, a guitar duo that played Greenville, N.C., back in the early 90s. Ahh, good times.
Back in the U.S.A.
Here’s a picture of me fighting the power at Tiananmen Square. Note that the presence of “the man” didn’t deter me.
