Three cheers for the Hattiesburg American

The Mississippi newspaper will not be covering Tiger Woods while he seeks treatment for his sex addiction in their city. To do so would not “show good taste.” Their explanation:

Since Saturday, the American has not published any reports on Woods possibly being here.

And, unless there is some confirmation from the clinic or Woods himself, we don’t intend to assign a reporter/photographer team to this story.

If something happens that warrants coverage, we’ll have it.

There is a fine line between covering Woods when he wrecks his car and extending coverage when and if he gets treatment.

Where does news end and privacy begin, even if the person involved is one of the most recognizable faces in the world? That’s a question that journalists debate constantly.

One of the tenets of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics states: “Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.”

We believe Woods deserves some privacy if he is getting treatment in Hattiesburg – or in Arizona or South Africa, as other online sites have reported in the last couple of weeks.

And we believe other patients at the clinic also deserve to be left alone.

Too often editors argue that events must be covered because, well, everyone else is covering it. Sometimes the right coverage is no coverage at all.

George Noory: The Night Listener

Great profile in The Atlantic about George Noory, the host of a late-night talk radio program that explores conspiracy theories and the supernatural. The program, “Coast to Coast,” commands an audience of 3 million listeners while airing nationwide on AM stations from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. I regularly listened to the show while driving home from my newspaper jobs back in the day.

The previous host, Art Bell, was terribly suspicious of “contrails” — the condensation trails left by commercial jets. He and many others believed that they were used to spread biological agents all across the United States. Wikipedia has an article devoted to the “chemtrails” conspiracy. Not sure I’m buying that one.

The article on Noory is interesting because it sheds a light on the huge — yet scarcely acknowledged — conspiracy movement out there. Quite a few people don’t trust much of what they hear. No easy remedy for that — probably just part of human nature. Besides, all conspiracies are wacky, except the ones that turn out to be true.

On another note, the following quote from Noory struck me because he said something that we rarely talk about:

“People are interconnected, and they are pulling themselves to a central point where we’re all meeting, which happens to be this radio show. But there is something out there that is truly profound. I mean, today they announced that the astronauts had attached a brand-new camera to the Hubble telescope, which they said would allow them to peer back to just 500 million years after the dawn of the universe. Isn’t that an incredibly profound statement? Five hundred million years after the dawn of the universe? What dawned it? You know, how did it start? Who are we? What are we doing here?”

Great questions, George.

Left-leaning academics explained

Nice summation of an academic paper examining why so many professors tend to sit at the left end of the political spectrum. Two reasons (among several): 1) Despite high intelligence, profs are paid less than private sector smarties, so they tend to favor redistributive policies; 2) Academics is now typecast as a suitable job for liberal thinkers.

This last quote says a lot:

“[W]e theorize that, within the general constraint that more liberals than conservatives will aspire for advanced educational credentials and academic careers of any kind, liberal students will be far more inclined than conservatives to enter fields that have come to define themselves around left-valenced images of intellectual personhood,” the paper says. “Over the course of its 20th century history, for example, sociology has increasingly defined itself as the study of race, class, and gender inequality — a set of concerns especially important to liberals — and this means that sociology will consistently recruit from a more liberal applicant pool than fields like mechanical engineering, and prove a more chilly home for those conservatives who manage to push through into graduate school or the academic ranks.”

Makes sense.

The 11 best foods you aren’t eating

From the NY Times, they are: Beets, cabbage, Swiss chard, cinnamon, pomengranate juice, dried plums, pumpkin seeds, sardines, tumeric, frozen blueberries, canned pumpkin.

Click on the link to read the benefits of each and serving suggestions. I certainly need the latter.

He nailed it

Another interesting story from the world of an Atlanta EMT. About a man who nailed his arm to the wall:

The Dispatcher’s voice crackles over the air and I hear giggling in the background. ‘Two-ten you’re responding to a third party call of a person impaled. Nothing further.’

This, at least, is intriguing. Normally we’re interrupted by a call to an all-too-familiar address for an all-too-familiar complaint. Seizure at a homeless shelter. Suicidal thoughts from a caller at a payphone. But impalement? I’m on my way.

Good read.

It was inevitable

Here’s the trailer of the “A-Team” remake starring Liam Neeson as John “Hannibal” Smith:

Dirk Benedict and Dwight Schultz, cast members from the original 80s TV show, will also appear. Nice the see B.A. Barackus’ customized van hasn’t changed much. In the TV show, The A-Team never killed anybody, thus avoiding the label of “mercenaries.” I doubt the film will bother keeping that quaint condition.

Regardless, the 11-year-old in me is incredibly excited.

What a great quote

In the Boston Globe’s article on Tuesday’s surprisingly close Senate race between slam-dunk Democrat Martha Coakley and upstart Republican Scott Brown, we get this insightful quote from the White House.

Said presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs: “I don’t think Scott Brown is going to win on Tuesday.”

Does that really need to be the fourth paragraph?

The Globe should take a look at Michael Kinsley’s tips for better news writing.

Good for Google

Google’s decision to stop censoring search results in China is welcome. Even more welcome is its more vocal stance in favor of free speech and against censorship. From the New York Times:

In December, a Google senior vice president, Jonathan Rosenberg, issued an online manifesto that placed Google’s business and ethical interests squarely behind open information, and against censorship.

“There are forces aligned against the open Internet — governments who control access, companies who fight in their own self-interests to preserve the status quo,” he wrote. “They are powerful, and if they succeed we will find ourselves inhabiting an Internet of fragmentation, stagnation, higher prices, and less competition.”

Couldn’t have said that better myself.

Usher loses $1M in car theft

Here’s the article. Begs the question — why would anyone drive around with a $1 million worth of jewelry and clothing in their car?

Errol Morris on the power of words

Documentary filmmaker Error Morris (“The Thin Blue Line,” “A Brief History of Time”) offers an interesting experiment in the New York Times. Click on this link to take part. It demonstrates the power of words in changing visual meaning. And it should also serve as a lesson that the subtle bias of the media we’re consuming has much to do with our perceptions and beliefs.