Investigating Investigative Journalism
John Oliver discovers that pretend news is the media world’s sole remaining home for intrepid investigative journalists.
On Cable News, ‘Torture’ Is a Dirty Word
TVNewser reports on a survey of media coverage by the organization “Covering Torture that suggests “cable news channels are far more likely to avoid the word torture in their coverage of world events, and instead use less offensive euphemisms for the practice, at least when applied to the U.S. government.” CNN and Fox News Channel used euphemisms 78% and 79% of the time, respectively, while MSNBC was split evenly 50/50.
How do you pack your bag for a seven-year, 22,000-mile international reporting assignment?
Talk about an ambitious effort! Next month, Paul Salopek — a two-time Pulitzer winner who has covered wars from the Balkans and Somalia to Afghanistan and Iraq — will “begin a seven-year reporting assignment that will take him 22,000 miles (give or take) on foot, from Africa across Asia and the United States, ultimately ending up in Patagonia at the southern tip of South America,” according to Nieman Journalism Lab.
“The route Salopek is following is the one anthropologists believe was the first path humans took out of Africa to populate the rest of the world. He’s calling it the Out of Eden, a narrative trek that will examine the current state of the cultures Salopek visits, while also writing about their history and connection to the greater world.”
“It’s been a cruel year for the fabled crew of reporters that covered the Vietnam War for The Associated Press,” begins a nice remembrance by the AP of its iconic Vietnam War combat correspondents that have passed away this year. Correspondent George Esper died in February, reporter Roy Essoyan a month later, legendary photographer Horst Faas passed away in May, and renowned reporter Malcolm Browne died on Monday. “Their deaths represent the slipping away of a generation of war reporters that brought the reality of the conflict to the living rooms of America in unprecedented detail and horrifying close-up,” the AP notes. They and their colleagues were pioneers of combat reporting and inspired so many of the great reporters that have followed in their footsteps.
Photo: Malcolm Browne with South Vietnamese troops (AP)
Vietnam war reporter Malcolm Browne dies
The journalist who captured an iconic image of a burning South Vietnamese monk in 1963 has died at the age of 81, according to the BBC.
He was one of the greats. An incredible reporter in every sense. RIP
Press freedom rankings from the Newseum and Freedom House
The most free? Finland, Norway and Sweden. The least? North Korea. Where does the U.S. rank? Find out here at the Newseum’s website.
Vietnam war reporter Malcolm Browne dies
The journalist who captured an iconic image of a burning South Vietnamese monk in 1963 has died at the age of 81, according to the BBC.
He was one of the greats. An incredible reporter in every sense. RIP
Man Who Armed Black Panthers was FBI Informant| Center for Investigative Reporting
For a decade, Richard Aoki filed covert reports on a range of political groups, according to the FBI agent who recruited him. At the same time, he was providing the Panthers with weapons. Read more.
Janet Paskin opines on condition I’ve puzzled over and am afflicted by. Why does print still retain the allure it does and when will it end?
![If not for Eric Alterman’s smart new Columbia Journalism Review piece, “The Girl Who Loved Journalists,” I might have been too ashamed to admit that as I watched David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (as with the three previous Swedish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy), I spent an inordinate amount of time marveling at the research skills of the “Girl,” Lisbeth Salander, and the somewhat peripheral issues of journalism that are addressed in the movie.
As Salander unraveled murders in no time flat, I thought back to how long it took me to do the research to expose long-secret massacres and other mass killings of civilians or the number of secret U.S. drone bases or how the Pentagon arms Mid-East despots and sighed more than once.
But it seems I’m not alone in focusing on the journalism. As Alterman astutely observes:
The trilogy’s plot… frequently turns on matters of journalistic propriety of the kind that are rarely discussed outside badly lit newsroom cafeterias and gloomy university seminar rooms. We see Mikael and Erica [Berger, Blomkvist’s lover, best friend, and editor] struggle with love and danger, but also with questions of proper sourcing in a magazine article versus a book, a little magazine versus a powerful (and compromised) newspaper. We see the drudgery of research, of interviewing sources, and building a story one detail at a time; of trying to figure out who’s lying and why, how to publish what one knows without giving away what one doesn’t, and then how to manipulate the numbskullery of television to build the biggest echo chamber possible for one’s work.
Alterman’s piece is filled with other intelligent observations about the power of money in journalism and how most of us who report don’t have much of it. I could go on, but you’d be better off reading the whole article here.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxb1qofqfv1qdtt31o1_500.jpg)
If not for Eric Alterman’s smart new Columbia Journalism Review piece, “The Girl Who Loved Journalists,” I might have been too ashamed to admit that as I watched David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (as with the three previous Swedish film adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy), I spent an inordinate amount of time marveling at the research skills of the “Girl,” Lisbeth Salander, and the somewhat peripheral issues of journalism that are addressed in the movie.
As Salander unraveled murders in no time flat, I thought back to how long it took me to do the research to expose long-secret massacres and other mass killings of civilians or the number of secret U.S. drone bases or how the Pentagon arms Mid-East despots and sighed more than once.
But it seems I’m not alone in focusing on the journalism. As Alterman astutely observes:
The trilogy’s plot… frequently turns on matters of journalistic propriety of the kind that are rarely discussed outside badly lit newsroom cafeterias and gloomy university seminar rooms. We see Mikael and Erica [Berger, Blomkvist’s lover, best friend, and editor] struggle with love and danger, but also with questions of proper sourcing in a magazine article versus a book, a little magazine versus a powerful (and compromised) newspaper. We see the drudgery of research, of interviewing sources, and building a story one detail at a time; of trying to figure out who’s lying and why, how to publish what one knows without giving away what one doesn’t, and then how to manipulate the numbskullery of television to build the biggest echo chamber possible for one’s work.
Alterman’s piece is filled with other intelligent observations about the power of money in journalism and how most of us who report don’t have much of it. I could go on, but you’d be better off reading the whole article here.
