Ombudsmen take an undeserved bashing

Matt Welch couldn't be more wrong in his latest in Reason Online: Anything but the Ombudsman! Why newspapers should avoid in-house watchdogs.

It's the paucity of ombudsman at U.S. newspapers (something like 40 out of 1,700 daily papers) that make contrarians like Welch take potshots at one of the few institutions that can help restore reader trust in newspapers. Ombudsmen do what no other editorial position can do: shine a light into the editorial process, expose slip-ups, and bring transparency to the labyrinthine newsrooms of America. Too bad Matt hasn't ever been exposed to one.

FBI seeking reporters' notes

Wired News: The FBI says it will soon demand reporters' notes in its attempts to nail the so-called Homeless Hacker, Adrian Lamo.

A bad idea. As the article points out, "According to the Justice Department's policy standards, subpoenas for reporters' notes can be issued only if 'the information sought is essential to a successful investigation -- particularly with reference to directly establishing guilt or innocence' and after the government has 'unsuccessfully attempted to obtain the information from alternative non-media sources.' "

Granger warns of magazine trends

IWantMedia has an interview with David Granger, editor in chief of Esquire. He says magazines are dividing into two camps: those that publish "substantial" stories, and those that "exist primarily with images and captions."

Fox News: Journalists need to take sides

From Romenesko today:

USA Today: CNN war correspondent Christiane Amanpour said on Tina Brown's CNBC show last week: "I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled (its Iraq war coverage). I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."

Fox News' response: "Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda."

Here's a great indication of the mindset over at Fox News. You're either a foot soldier for Bush or a terrorist sympathizer. No room for anything in between -- like honest journalism.

A farewell to journalism

Bill Keough tells about the sudden end of his newspaper career at the Philadelphia Daily News.

Media negligent on lack of 9/11-Saddam link

Editor & Publisher: Two-thirds of Americans still think that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. The news media have done a "woefully inadequate job," writes E&P editor Greg Mitchell. I'd use a different term: an atrocious job.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Journalists, devoted until death

I just got around to reading Orville Schell's piece in the Sunday NY Times Magazine with the vague title, "Another Tribe Without a State." (God forbid they should use the word journalist.) It's about modern-day journalists without borders who put themselves in the line of fire for something greater than nationalism -- to tell people the truth about a story. Excerpt:

[Mazen] Dana, [a Palestinian Arab from Hebron,] represented those reporters whose allegiances are not primarily to nation, patriotism or ideology but to this new independent tribe of cryptic witness-bearing, the antithesis of embedded, producer reliant, flag-waving Geraldos. ''Freedom means to me to work free, no one bother you,'' he told his C.P.J. interviewer in his game English. ''We film, and we show the world what's going on. . . . My motive is to continue my work, even if it costed for me a lot of problems and a lot of injury . . . even if it cost me my life.''

It finally did cost him his life. ...

CNN relaunches Anderson Cooper

The St. Petersburg Times' TV critic takes a look at Anderson Cooper 360, half of a much-anticipated reconfiguring of CNN's early evening programming. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

A cable TV network about celebs

Thanks to IWantMedia for this pointer to the Miami Herald: American Media, publisher of the National Enquirer and other tabloids, is planning to create a cable TV network about celebrities.

Thank God someone is stepping up to fill the celebrity gap on TV.

Is McClatchy different?

Susan Paterno in the American Journalism Review on my old employer: Is McClatchy Different? The Sacramento-based company, with its hip, high-profile CEO and no-layoff policy, has positioned itself as an alternative to the typical approach to corporate journalism. Does it deliver the goods?

Fallows on Murdoch

In the latest "One Question" feature on IWantMedia comes this: Would America be different if Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch had never entered the U.S. media market?

James Fallows, author of the essay "The Age of Murdoch" in the September issue of The Atlantic Monthly, responds: "Rupert Murdoch's effect on the U.S. media has been like the effect of a testosterone-surge on a teenaged boy. ..."

Neil Armstrong walk tops TV news events

Reuters: Astronaut Neil Armstrong's moonwalk, JFK's 1963 assassination and the 9/11 attacks are the top three most requested clips in Britain's ITN archive. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Advertisers support journalists in R.I.

Doc has some nice words about newspapering, while taking note of the actions by two prominent Rhode Island advertisers to step in in an effort to land the staffers of the Providence Journal a fair and long-overdue contract.

'Liberal talk radio' to debut in January

New York Post: A still-unnamed, all-liberal talk radio network that promises to be the antidote to conservative powerhouses like Rush Limbaugh is planning to launch in January.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Searching for legal news

SearchEngineWatch.com carries an article today about how to search out legal news on the Web. Featured sites include FindLaw, Law.com, Tech Law Advisor and LawMeme.

Ken Auletta, Fox News, and the New Yorker

The LA Times Magazine piece notes that the New Yorker's wonderful media writer, Ken Auletta, recently spent four months investigating the Fox Network's newsl practices. Unforunately, I can't find the article online anywhere.

Here's a short Q&A in the New Yorker in May on the subject. Memes.org reprints the Q&A here in a much more readable format. Neither site links to the article, and the New Yorker, pitifully, offers neither a search button nor archived editions. (Google's search of the New Yorker site came up empty.)

In other words, the New Yorker has no relevance online. Guess we'll never know what Auletta found out.

Journalism gets no respect

Why has the journalism profession lost the confidence of the public? Jayson Blair, Matt Drudge, Bill O'Reilly and Katie Couric may be to blame, writes Michael D'Antonio in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Bashing 'Day to Day'

Jon Carroll in today's SF Chron bashes NPR's new hip-tech show, Day to Day.

Thinking Clearly: a new book on journalism

I've written chapters in four books related to new media subjects. The latest arrived in my mailbox yesterday.

Thinking Clearly is a compendium of journalism case studies edited by Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell, who head the Project for Excellence in Journalism. It contains chapters on McCarthyism, the Columbine school shootings, Watergate, and John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, among others. Reporters on the project include Geneva Overholser, former Washington Post ombudsman who often appears on PBS's NewsHour; Jack Nelson, former Washington bureau chief of the LA Times; and Jon Margolis, a former long-time reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

I wrote the second chapter, Internet Journalism and the Starr Investigation. I posted it on my website here.

Amazon.com gives this summary of the book:

Written by professional journalists and classroom-tested at schools of journalism, these case studies are designed to provoke conversation about the issues that shape the production and presentation of the news in the new media age of the twenty-first century. This is no abstract ethics manual for reporters but rather a survey of real-life moments when people working in the news had to make critical decisions. In these episodes, questions of craft, ethics, competition, and commerce intertwine, affecting the way we, the consumers of news, understand the world around us. The case studies cover a range of topics -- the commercial imperatives of newsroom culture, standards of verification, the competition of public and private interests, including the question of privacy -- in a variety of settings: Watergate, the Richard Jewell case, John McCain¥s 2000 presidential campaign, and the Columbine shooting, among others.

I'm told the case study I wrote is already being taught in journalism schools and university classrooms, such as Notre Dame. Cool.

Slide show on the blackout

Here's an engaging photo slide show, with audio, on the blackout by the NY Times. (It's on the front page, right side, if that link doesn't work.)

Fair and Balanced Day

Friday is Fair and Balanced Day.

A Yale law prof tells the LA Times, meantime, that Al Franken's use of "fair and balanced" in his book title is obvious satire, so Fox News Channel's suit should not succeed.

And the NY Times is hosting a readers forum (though it's a badly organized grab bag) on: Fox v. Franken ó whose side are you on and why?

Gore, producer plan citizen-TV network

New York Observer: Gore Producer Plans Network: 'TV Should Be Gray, Not Black and White'

Steve Rosenbaum, a distant New York friend who still keeps in touch by e-mail (I wrote about him here when Steve was executive producer of "MTV News Unfiltered"), has signed on as a consultant to Al Gore's proposed TV network. He says Gore is interested in "video diaries" -- programming produced by citizens with digital cameras. Excerpt:

Mr. Rosenbaum is now a consultant to the incipient network that Mr. Gore is building with the entrepreneur and Democratic fund-raiser Joel Hyatt. Mr. Rosenbaumís vision is this: He believes regular people wielding digital camerasóthe kind you pick up at Circuit City for $1,000ócan supply great utopian television that does things like build community, foster dialogue and upend old-school mediaóa Peopleís Republic of Tubedom, in which the video viewpoints of average schlubs, packaged by producers, can tear down the battlement walls of television, topple the statue of, oh, say Fox News chief Roger Ailes and sing a Whitmanian Video Song of Themselves.

Mr. Rosenbaum calls it an "open-source framework." ...

"I think the audience is people who feel theyíre underserved by the current offerings of information and ideas on television," said Mr. Rosenbaum. "I do think the challenge from a marketing perspective is inviting people back to television whoíve fundamentally decided that itís a sideshow, who have taken it out of their idea diet because itís not satiating."

"One of the things people misunderstand about participatory media -- thereís this fear that itís going to be local access," said Mr. Rosenbaum. ...

"In fact, I had this conversation with one of the network creative guys the other day, and they said: ëHow do we know, if we invite people in, that theyíll do good work?í Well, if they donít, you donít put it on the air."

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Print News in an Online World

Jimmy Guterman in Business 2.0 (I'm a print subscriber, so this may not work for you): Print News in an Online World. It has a bright future -- if it concentrates on what it can do better than online.

His question: ìA generation is growing up learning to get news online for free. Wouldn't those young people, who can get NYTimes.com online for free, find it counterintuitive to pay $1 every day for the same information, just because it's on paper?î

His answer:îThere is one area in which print continues to beat most online news purveyors: analysisÖ And print still has portability sewn up.î

Another censorship attempt from the right

More censorship attempts from the right. This time, the Washington Post reports, Fox News Channel has sued Al Franken and his publishing house to stop them from using the expression "fair and balanced" in the title of his upcoming book.

Fox News, in a trademark infringement lawsuit filed in Manhattan, claims that it registered the expression "fair and balanced" in 1998.

That's not only outrageous, it's uproariously funny.

Here's Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them on Amazon. (Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.)

Meantime, Eschaton might want to reconsider its slogan -- Eschaton - Fair and Balanced -- before Fox comes after it for trademark infringement.

Bold moves, bad luck tripped up Tower

Sacramento Bee: In a little more than seven weeks, Tower may be walking into bankruptcy court.

Too bad. Tower Records, born in Sacramento (I often had coffee at the Tower Cafe, site of the first Tower outlet), grew into a global phenomenon before it overreached.

What media consolidation?

Karen H., on a members-only site, posted this ironic observation about the battle over media consolidation:

The Chicago Tribune's editorial on Wednesday:

Consolidation of media? This is a golden age for media diversity through broadcast TV, cable and satellite TV, broadcast radio, satellite radio, Internet radio, newspapers, magazines, Webzines, Weblogs and everything else. This nation has never experienced a more glorious, rambunctious, free-wheeling era of free expression.

The editorial forgot to say how the Tribune already owns a television station, a cable outlet, a radio station and lots of other stuff.

What the Tribune owns:

Broadcasting

WPIX - New York
KTLA - Los Angeles
WGN - Chicago
WPHL - Philadelphia
WLVI - Boston
KDAF - Dallas
WATL - Atlanta
KHWB - Houston
KCPQ - Seattle
KTWB - Seattle
WBZL - Miami - Ft. Lauderdale
KWGN - Denver
KTXL - Sacramento
WXIN - Indianapolis
WTTV - Indianapolis
KSWB - San Diego
WTIC - Hartford/New Haven
WTXX- Hartford
WXMI - Grand Rapids
WGNO - New Orleans
WNOL - New Orleans
WPMT - Harrisburg
WBDC - Washington
WEWB - Albany
KPLR - St. Louis
KWBP - Portland
WB Network (partial stake)
Tribune Entertainment

Cable

WGN
Chicago Land Television
Central Florida News 13

Radio

WGN - AM (Chicago)

Newspapers

Newsday (Long Island, NY)
Los Angeles Times
Chicago Tribune
Baltimore Sun
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Orlando Sentinel
The Hartford Courant
The Morning Call (Allentown, PA)
Daily Press (Hampton Roads, VA)
The Advocate (Stamford, CT)
Greenwich Time (CT)
La Opinion (Los Angeles)
Exito (Chicago)
Hoy (New York)
El Sentinel (Orlando)

Other

Chicago Cubs
Tribune Media Services
Classified Ventures (partial)
Brass Ring
Zap 2 It
BlackVoices.com
Chicago magazine

Source: CJR

Should Kobe's accuser be named?

The name of the young woman who alleges that NBA star Kobe Bryant raped her at a Colorado resort has been revealed by tabloid newspapers and a radio DJ; a photograph and other personal information can now be found on numerous web sites. However, the vast majority of mainstream news organizations have withheld the name of Bryant's accuser.

What should the rules be? PBS's NewsHour takes a look tonight.

Media map of New York City

Do you know the way to Conde Nast? Or NBC? The Publicity Club of New York has developed an interactive online map to New York City's leading media companies.

Cool map. Wish it were a lot bigger, though.

It's currently the top link on IWantMedia, which has been doing its usual stellar job in aggregating pointers to stories on important topics such as the FCC's rollback of media ownership rules.

Another paid archive on NYT

Here's another Sponsored Archive on the New York Times on the Web today, Le Divorce, paid for by Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Petition against FCC ownership rules

If you're opposed to the FCC's rollback of big media ownership rules, here's an online petition. The group Media Reform hopes to gather 1 million signatures. Thanks to Dean Landsman for the pointer.

From Naked News to Naked Fiction

Howie Kurtz's latest Media Notes column in the Washington Post is full o' good stuff: From Naked News to Naked Fiction.

Will Fox lead media to 'partiality'?

Hartford Courant: News Media May Follow Fox From Objectivity to Partiality. Mainstream media, prodded by partisan news outlets like Fox News Channel, will eventually be more straightforward about their political identity, writes James Fallows. Excerpts:

"Sooner or later Murdoch's outlets, especially Fox News, will be more straightforward about their political identity - and they are likely to bring the rest of the press with them," writes Fallows [in the September issue of Atlantic Monthly, not yet online]. "There will be liberal papers, radio shows, TV programs and websites for liberals, and conservative ones for conservatives." ...

Keith Olbermann, host of "Countdown," MSNBC's prime-time news program, says bias in news coverage arises less from ideology than from market forces.

"The seeming fading of impartiality is a direct result of the deregulation of radio and television," Olbermann says. "Networks and stations that pander to a particular political audience aren't doing it for philosophical reasons; they simply perceive a valuable demographic group. I always think of the Monty Python sketch in which the same newscast is repeated five or six times for different animals. `And now the news for Wombats. No wombats were involved in a collision on the M-4 motorway ...' `And now the news for Parakeets. No parakeets were involved in a collision on the M-4 motorway.' " ...

I tend to agree. Both personalization and the increasing fragmentation of media are driving this trend.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

The Villager: The NYT is swiping our story ideas

Howie Kurtz in the Washington Post: The publisher of the Villager says the New York Times has been stealing story ideas from his small Greenwich Village paper. "At first we were flattered that the Times was picking up our stories," the publisher wrote a Times editor, "but that has long since turned to dismay and anger. . . . The weight of the evidence indicates lazy reporting."
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Survey: Support for First Amendment Up

AP story:

Support for the First Amendment is on the rise and many Americans want more information about how the government is fighting the war on terrorism, a survey released Friday shows.

The nationwide telephone poll of 1,000 adults found that 19 percent of respondents strongly agreed that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. That number was down sharply from the 41 percent found on last year's survey, conducted nine months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Nearly half of those questioned believed they had too little access to information about the government's war on terrorism, according to the annual survey commissioned by the Nashville-based First Amendment Center and American Journalism Review magazine.

A majority of respondents said the consolidation of media ownership decreases both the range and quality of information they receive. ...

The Myth of 'Big Media'

Columnist Robert J. Samuelson in this week's Newsweek claims that the galaxy of choices available to consumers today means that nearly everyone will find something offensive in media -- and this hostility has latched on to the FCC's decision to relax media ownership rules.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Bay Area magazine scene 'flourishing'

Sunday's SF Chron carried a long feature about the San Francisco magazine scene.

The Bay Area magazine scene, post-dot-bomb, is flourishing, fulfilling its role as New York's cross-country creative counterpart, the place where the seeds of great magazines are planted. ...

I don't know that I'd use the word flourishing, given the state of the magazine industry everywhere. But the story does point to a few bright spots.

News media too soft on White House

In today's Newsday, Norman Solomon of the Institute for Public Accuracy says that journalists have shown a reflexive deference toward the Bush administration since 9/11.

Bad radio news for Merle

Los Angeles Times: Merle Haggard, whose new song, "That's the News," criticizes big media, is unlikely to get his music played on commercial radio, says a Los Angeles Times editorial.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Photographing the famous, unclothed

NYT to name an ombudsman

The New York Times said today it will name a "public editor" to be a readers' representative.

Good news -- something they should have done 20 years ago.

One last byline for Vincent Canby

Now that's one prolific writer: The New York Times's front-page obituary of Bob Hope carries the byline of Vincent Canby, a Times writer who has been dead himself since 2000.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

The Press: Time for a New Era?

I'm not quite sure what the Jayson Blair scandal has to do with "objectivity" -- does subjectivity somehow equal fabrication? -- but former Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley has an opinion piece that I generally agree with: Major media should stop wearing "objectivity" on their sleeves. Still, I wish Bartley's essay outlined a philosophy to replace the flamed-out wreckage of objectivity. Certainly fairness and balance -- rather than subjectivity and shallow partisanship -- should be among the principles undergirding the traditional news media's core precepts.

David Brooks gets plum NYT column

David Brooks, a contributor to the New York Times and a senior editor at the Weekly Standard, has been named an Op-Ed page columnist for the paper. Brooks, also a regular on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, is usually wrong on the issues, but at least he's intellectually honest, unlike the George Will/Bill O'Reilly/Robert Novak/Rush Limbaugh/Cal Thomas wing of right-wing commentators.

Jayson Blair's next bold move

NY Post: Jayson Blair, the fiction-writing former New York Times reporter, has landed writing assignments from Esquire and Jane magazines. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Should we know the name of Bryant's accuser?

New in OJR: Mark Glaser says the mainstream media have a longstanding tradition of not publishing the names of alleged rape victims, but no such code of behavior governs the Internet.

Meantime, in case you missed this AP story: Officials: Bryant Accuser Was Hospitalized.

'The Restaurant' outsmarts TiVo

Lost Remote: NBC's innovative new reality show, "The Restaurant," takes product placement to a new level, helping "TiVo proof" the broadcast. The show is also testing a new funding model: American Express, Coors and Mitsubishi are financing the show in exchange for extraordinary on-air presence. "I think the audience will decide if it's a good model," said Ben Silverman, who helped conceive the show. As for the restaurant, its eight phones are ringing off the hook and reservations re booked well into the immediate future.

Witch hunt against the BBC

From mi compadre Robert Scheer: The witch hunt against the BBC. Excerpt:

As Paul Reynolds, a veteran BBC military affairs analyst, said of the British intelligence dossier cited as the source for Bush's now-repudiated claim about Iraq's nuclear program: "Of the nine main conclusions in the British government document 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction,' not one has been shown to be conclusively true."

M-I-C-K-E-Y: He's the Leader of the Brand

LA Times: Disney is honoring the 75th birthday of Mickey Mouse and boosting its merchandising by planting the character in "hip new places," such as ESPN and "Sex and the City." Thanks to the keen-eyed IWantMedia for yet another pointer.

Key 'Influentials' Are Web Junkies

Advertising Age: "Influentials" prefer the Internet to any other media for acquiring daily information, says a new study from WashingtonPost/Newsweek Interactive. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

News media vastly underreport U.S. death toll in Iraq

From the July 17 E&P: Media Underplays U.S. Death Toll in Iraq. Soldiers Dead Since May Is 3 Times Official Count.

Any way you look at it, the news is bad enough. According to Thursday's press and television reports, 33 U.S. soldiers have now died in combat since President Bush declared an end to the major fighting in the war on May 2. This, of course, is a tragedy for the men killed and their families, and a problem for the White House.

But actually the numbers are much worse -- and rarely reported by the media.

According to official military records, the number of U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq since May 2 is actually 85. This includes a staggering number of non-combat deaths. Even if killed in a non-hostile action, these soldiers are no less dead, their families no less aggrieved. And it's safe to say that nearly all of these people would still be alive if they were still back in the States.

Nevertheless, the media continues to report the much lower figure of 33 as if those are the only deaths that count.

A Web site called Iraq Coalition Casualty Count is tracking the deaths, by whatever cause, of U.S. military personnel in Iraq, based on official Pentagon and CENTCOM press releases and Army Times and CNN casualty trackers. Their current count is 85 since May 2. ...

The followup is that the article set records for reader e-mail, with readers saying they want the press to cover all U.S. casualties.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

LA Times cartoon prompts Secret Service inquiry

The Los Angeles Times' publishing of this cartoon of someone pointing a gun at President Bush's head prompted a visit by a Secret Service agent.

Even though the cartoon was pro-Bush.

Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Gates taking Corbis public?

Puget Sound Business Journal (alas, registration required): Recent moves at Bill Gates-owned Corbis may signal preparation for a stock sale.

Bryant's secretive life pierced

Tim Kawakami in today's San Jose Merc: Kobe Bryant's secretive life shaken.

OT rules would exempt journalists

Overtime could be a thing of the past for many journalists under the Labor Department's regressive new rules.

The strange changing of the guard at the NYT

The LA Times' Tim Rutten dissects the odd circumstances surrounding Bill Keller's appointment as the New York Times' new executive editor.

A whopper of a correction

Looks like Keller has some work to do. Consider this 2,132-word correction in today's Times. Thanks to Hylton for the pointer.

Keller named editor of NYT

Bill Keller, a columnist who has served as managing editor and foreign editor, will take over as executive editor of the NY Times on July 30. Here's coverage from E&P, AP and the NY Daily News.

Mercury News' awful op-ed pages

I've been biting my tongue, not wanting to ding my local paper since it went to a new look on its op-ed pages a month or so ago, but I've just got to say it: The San Jose Mercury News' new look for its op-ed pages is the worst redesign I've ever seen.

As a former design director, I know that readers don't like change, and more than a few of them complain every time a paper does a makeover. I'm not one of these readers. I enjoy change and welcome improvements to a publication's typography and design.

The Mercury News, under Rob Elder, who left a year or so ago to join the Santa Clara University ethics center, had what I considered the most approachable, well-designed op-ed pages in the nation. So I was horrified a few weeks back to see them trot out a new look: typography (lots of italics) that harks back to the 1970s, a mishmosh of vertical letters and columns on the opinion page, and the abandonment of photographs for awful oversized 1960s-style illustrations. But the worst thing may be the introduction of Wall Street Journal-type 1950s-era line art for its columnists. (Sorry, none of this is available online.) The content hasn't suffered, but its presentation is so uninviting that I spend much less time on these pages.

What a sad, sad descent into op-ed mediocrity.

Dan on publishing's future

Dan is at NetMedia 2003 and notes that publishers -- including audio and video news distributors -- must now create content for a variety of devices and customers. He points to a digital printing press, which will allow personalized versions of print publications, and adds: "Soon, we'll be printing books to order. I wonder if newspapers will ever go this way, because Web publishing is so much more timely."

Jobless journalists' website

The SF Chron looks at www.8goodpeople.com, a jobless journalists' website that includes a Pulitzer Prize winner and a former NY Times staffer.

Big Media's silence

William Safire in Thursday's Times:

Over the protests of 750,000 viewers and readers, three appointees to the Federal Communications Commission last month voted to permit the takeover of America's local press, television and radio by a handful of mega-corporations.

If allowed to stand, this surrender to media giantism would concentrate the power to decide what we read and see ó in both entertainment and news ó in the hands of an ever-shrinking establishment elite. ...

No thanks go to the biggest media, where CBS's "60 Minutes," NBC's "Dateline" and ABC's "20/20" found the rip-off of the public interest by their parent companies too hot to handle. Most network newscasts dutifully covered the scandalous story as briefly and coolly as possible, failing to disclose how much it meant to their parent companies, which were lobbying furiously for gobble-up rights.

Unencumbered by such a conflict of interest, public television's liberal Bill Moyers inveighed for months against the power grab, and Consumers Union is on the job. The conservative Joe Scarborough blew the whistle on media giantism on cable's MSNBC, which included an interview with the New York Daily News publisher (and mini-mogul) Mort Zuckerman, outspoken foe of the conglomeration crowd.