Times Faces Plagiarism... Again

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

A New York Times reporter recently resigned amid accusations of plagiarism, and on February 14, the Times issued an Editors' Note detailing the case.

Zachery Kouwe worked as a blogger and reporter for the New York Times since October 2008. The accusations of plagiarism were made by the Wall Street Journal regarding a post made by Kouwe on the DealBook blog at nytimes.com. The WSJ found "extensive similarities" between Kouwe's article and an article printed just hours earlier by the WSJ, and Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thomson sent a letter to New York Times editor Bill Keller describing "this case of apparent plagiarism." In an internal investigation, the Times uncovered additional cases of plagiarism by Kouwe.

The Times printed a correction both as an Editors' Note and alongside Kouwe's plagiarized article. The newspaper detailed its own policy on plagiarism, ending with the Times' dedication to protecting the integrity of journalism.

This was not the first incidence of a Times reporter taking liberties with journalism. In 2003, Jayson Blair, another reporter for the Times, was found guilty of plagiarizing. Additionally, the Times discovered that Blair was inventing quotes, facts and even sources to enhance his stories.

Unfortunately, these incidences reflect poorly on the Times. In only seven years this newspaper produced two writers whose ethics were questionable by all standards of journalism. This does not seem coincidental.

Is there something in the atmosphere at the Times that forces writers to feel the need to cheat? Or, does the atmosphere at the Times enable cheaters and make them feel like they can get away with cheating?

The Times has promised to do a review of all articles written by Kouwe, but maybe it needs to review its own policies, and it certainly needs to review its editing practices. A respected paper like the Times will no longer have any respect if things like this continue.

Read more...

Is a Journalism Degree Enough?

After finding a blog post written by Joe Sheller about what kind of education journalism majors should be seeking, I began to think about our own program here at Simpson College. Could the way students are learning about the journalism field really be as out of date as he says?

I don't believe Simpson is that far behind. Sure we still have a lot of catching up to do, but in the wake of the changing media industry I think the professors here are doing all they can to make sure their students receive the best education possible.

I dusted off my copy of the general catalog to look up what courses it takes to graduate with a degree in multimedia journalism or integrated marketing communication. It seems to me that many of the courses that students are required to take to obtain their degree also push them to think less as just writers and more as entrepreneurs.

Take our beginning news writing and reporting course for instance. I would have never dreamed I would be tweeting little pieces of news that I see happening around campus, let alone writing this blog. I'm also in a marketing course, and the one thing my professor keeps pounding into our heads is how we need to be tech savvy.

That doesn't just mean knowing how to use Facebook and Twitter. As Sheller tells us in his blog, more adults are learning all about these social media sites, and we as students need to be as ahead of the game as possible. Just taking a course in web design and web coding may put you miles ahead of your competitors in the job hunt.

So maybe the journalism field is changing, and maybe some colleges aren't doing enough to prepare their students, but the people at Simpson College seem to be making enough changes in the program to help enable students in the long run.

Read more...

Now Hiring: The White House

Monday, February 15, 2010

Millions of Americans are currently on the hunt for a job. With many businesses laying off employees, it can be discouraging when no one is hiring.


Recently, a slightly unexpected job opportunity opened up dealing with social networks. President Barack Obama recently announced that the Democratic National Committee is in the process of hiring a new "social networks manager." According to the Wall Street Journal Blogs, the "social networks manager" is responsible for maintaining President Obama's Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace accounts.

The person currently responsible for this job is Mia Cambronero. Cambronero has recently announced that she is stepping down from her position as the "social networks manager."

According to Organizing for America's, "social networks manager" job description, applicants must be "passionate about engaging millions of Americans in advancing President Obama's agenda and changing the country."

So what does it take to become President Obama's new "social network manager?" According to the job description, qualifications include having excellent writing and editing skills, being able to craft affective messages, working under deadline pressure and many more.

The job description basically expresses their need for a professional 'tweeter,' or 'status updater.' Though the qualifications are higher than the Organizing for America's job description make it seem like, there is a chance that an ordinary U.S. citizen might end up working for the President.

If you would like more information on the job description and qualifications, or would like apply, visit the Organizing for America's "social network manager" application.

Read more...

Creating a Good Video Story

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Video stories are becoming an essential part of online and newspaper multimedia reports. But what makes a video story good?


Recently, Rebecca Aguilar, freelance multimedia reporter in Dallas, asked three television news videographers what they think makes for a good video story.

Chuck Denton, a videographer based near Los Angeles, was one of the interviewees. Also interviewed were Bonnie Gonzalez, a reporter and videographer in Austin, and Jim Kent, a videographer with his own company, ArtGecko Productions.
Denton says you need to make sure there are visual elements that can help tell the story.

"Are the interviews dynamic?" he says you should ask yourself in order to determine if a story would make a good video story. "Are they compelling enough to keep folks interested in tuning in?"

Gonzalez says a good video story has a lot of action and natural sounds. These are the sounds you hear in the video that make you feel like you are actually there.

Kent says you should stick with print if the story is complicated and complex. Otherwise, it is better to use video because television is a visual medium.

All three agree that the characters in the video play an important role. Characters that are compelling help tell the story and keep the viewers interested.

They also say that having good sound to tell the story is key. Gonzalez says it is also important to have action to tell an interesting story.

I think that all of these things are important in telling a good video story. A video story would not be interesting if you didn't have energetic or emotional characters telling the story. A video story would also seem dull if there was no action or if the storyline wasn't fitting for a video story.

Read more...

NORML Fights For CBS 's Billboard

Friday, February 12, 2010

The CBS Corporation has made their voice about not legalizing the use of marijuana loud and clear.


They recently denied NORML, the National Organization of Marijuana Laws, a spot on their digital billboard in New York City's Time Square.

The fifteen-second ad would argue that taxing and regulating the adult use and sale of marijuana would raise billions of dollars in national revenue. It was supposed to appear on Monday, February 1, 2010, but CBS, along with Neutron Media rejected the paid advertisement.

Representatives from Neutron Media had contacted NORML in January. The ad was supposed to air 18 times a day for two months. The NORML Foundation got a contractual agreement with Neutron Media to air two separate NORML advertisements, and made an initial ad exclusively for the CBS digital billboard. This advertisement was predicted to be seen by over 1.5 million people a day.

Not surprisingly, NORML was more than unhappy and set up a petition on their site to demand CBS to change their bias ruling.

To watch the ad, click here.
To sign the NORMAL petition, click here. So far there are 1,803 signatures. Their goal is 2,500.

Read more...

Hyperlocal Site Builds on Olympic Games

As newspapers face an uncertain future, an emerging news platform, the hyperlocal Web site, may be opening exciting doors for citizens to follow and showcase their communities.


Although hyperlocal Web sites have been steadily growing through the past year, I would not be surprised if my readers are unfamiliar with the new platform. Described by Cain Miller and Brad Stone in their April 2009 article for the New York Times, hyperlocal websites provide extremely localized information. Often the Web sites operate without hired journalists, but instead with input from those within the community. The content of a typical hyperlocal Web site ranges from links to external articles and blogs, local government news, arrests, home sales, road construction, and restaurant and event reviews. Also, many of these sites have the capability to cover and deliver news faster than larger news organizations.

While smaller local newspapers (such as those in rural Iowa) can usually cover all the above information, hyperlocals prove beneficial in bigger metro areas, whose papers cannot always dedicate the manpower to covering individual neighborhoods or suburbs. Many are becoming even more innovative, following the examples of sites like Outside.in, which has an iPhone app allowing users to locate news and events within a 1,000 foot radius of their location. Also, many supporters of hyperlocal Web sites praise its potential to bring local advertising dollars to the Web.

Clearly, hyperlocal Web sites serve a very defined audience. However, in a February 11, 2010 article at the Online Journalism Review, Dave Chase, owner and editor of the hyperlocal sunvallyonline.com, presented several ways in which sites can boost their viewership to a larger, perhaps even national level. Currently, his site, which covers the Wood River Valley region of Idaho, is capitalizing on the 2010 Winter Olympics. A local of the Wood River Valley area, Curtis Bacca currently works for snowboarders Lindsey Jacobellis, Seth Wescott, and Shaun White and is with the team in Vancouver to prepare boards for competition. To help Chase and promote Sun Valley Online, Bacca shoots a video blog of his work with the team that is uploaded to the site. By doing this, Chase hopes to create a huge jump in short-term viewership as the games proceed that will lead to an increase in regular and steady viewers.

Examples of other national events or news that hyperlocals could connect to their own sites include natural disasters or local celebrity news. I certainly agree with Chase that hyperlocals provide an exciting new platform for news and I look forward to seeing them develop in the future. I do have one reservation however, and that is on the issue of quality. The downfall of the hyperlocal Web site will be when quality is ignored in an effort to produce fast content. As they develop, hyperlocals must be sure to adhere to high standards of quality and journalistic ethics.

Read more...

Google Makes Necessary Changes to "Buzz"

Google has decided to make adjustments to privacy settings on Google Buzz after a bad perception in it's first week of service.


For those of you who aren't familiar with the new technology of Google Buzz, it's like Google's own, polished version of Facebook and Twitter. It is available to you as soon as you log into your Gmail account and allows you to share photos, videos, and more.
The big problem with Buzz, though, was that it automatically allowed anyone who accessed your page to view your list of followers and the list of people that you were following. Also, Google made it very difficult to access and change these privacy settings, leaving Buzz users distressed.

But changes have been made. Google has now added a feature to Buzz causing a window to pop up the first time Gmail users log on, asking them, "How do you want to be seen to others?" The default option will be to show the list of people you're following and the list of people following you as well on your public profile, but that box can be easily found and unchecked.

With these new adjustments being made, Google hopes to rid of it's initial bad reputation and have users recognize some of it's positive features. Buzz strives to offer convenience by automatically following the people you e-mail and chat with the most on your Gmail account, and by having new post pop up instantly with no refresh required.

Google has taken over the web as a search engine, a mail provider, and now possibly as an alternative to Facebook and Twitter. It seems we have to ask ourselves now: What will they come up with next?

Read more...

Google Threatens Telecommunication Companies

Wednesday, February 10, 2010


Google announced February 10, that it would be testing its version of a new higher speed Internet. It will be offering this Internet access in certain communities to show people the abilities that the faster broadband network would have.


The company fully believes that their internet would be able to speedily stream 3-D medical images from hospitals to specialized medical centers and would make downloading full length movie only a matter of minutes.

Google has been frustrated with the low speed broadband that the United States currently has. The broadband networks in the U.S. are considerably slower than that of other well developed countries. But this is not Google's first attempt at changing broadband networks. Google paid $4 billion to buy a portion of a wireless spectrum to loosen the control carriers have over that area.

Google is proving "that we can have super-fast open broadband networks that break the duopoly of cable and telephone companies that we have today." said Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press.

Critics say this is just a public relations effort by Google to get broadband companies to offer higher speed internet to its customers and therefore have to play by Google's rules.

Google maintains that it is just trying to advance business and technology. Richard S. Whitt, Google's Washington telecommunications and media counsel say Google is using the test to get broadband companies to offer higher-speed internet at lower costs.

No matter what the intentions the test will be administered to many communities and could reach up to 500,000 internet consumers.

Read more...

The Future of Newspapers and Coupons?

One of the most important reasons that newspapers should still be in print a couple days a week is for the coupons. As crazy as it sounds this might be the reason that newspapers continue to stay in print. The part this is sad is whether people would just be buying the paper for the savings rather than enriching their minds.


Coupon use has now jumped 27 percent compared to that of previous years. This is the first time in 17 years. Now that coupons are becoming the next best thing, there is the fear of them going digital as well. The main bandwagon is the Internet. Online coupons available for print are easy, cheap, and convenient. The actual facts is that coupons being used are very low. It seems that newspaper just might still have a chance of surviving this online enemy.

Read more...

Life Without the AP

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

For nearly two months, Google News went with out using Associated Press articles on its site. Those article will soon be returning to the Google site once negatiations between the AP and Google are finished. The negotiation is over the creation of a new licensing argreement the at will allow Google to continue to publish AP articles.


While Google is jumping back on the AP bandwagon, CNN will be getting off and go a week cold turkey from using the AP wires. CNN wants to prove that it is still a top contender in gathering and breaking news by itself.

Unlike Google, CNN.com does not use AP content or images. CNN only uses AP wires to collect information, but it believes it can rely on its own wires to provide the same great coverage.

However, will this really prove anything? If CNN goes a week without the AP and doesn't end up failing miserably, is one week really enough time to prove that CNN is capable of functioning without help. The only thing that one week can prove is that CNN cannot function on its own, if it ends up failling its own one week test.

I think a better test would be to see if CNN can stay a float for a month by itself. That would be a real test of its news gathering abilities.

Read more...

Tweeting in the Media

A new form of interviewing is starting to replace the usual "man-on-the-street" work. Now, instead of putting a microphone in front of you and asking you to comment, many media companies may start asking if they can use your Twitter feed. To make this even easier, developing company Wiredset has created Trenderr to sort marketing information for businesses, and now a new site specifically designed for the media: Curatorr.

According to Frederic Lardinois, Curatorr allows the media to perform advanced Twitter searches and place relevant tweets into folders for future use. These tweets can then be shown on television straight off the site.

Curatorr was used first by MTV during the Hope for Haiti Concert to publish tweets on the air, and other networks like CNN have also began to use Curatorr. It currently is only available to TV networks and other media companies, and the price each company will pay depends on how it is used.

Read more...

Twitter Replaces Fireside Chats?

Paul Boutin, a tech columnist for the New York Times wrote an article last May encouraging President Obama to use Twitter more frequently. Boutin felt that a few 140 character notes from the President could serve as abbreviated fireside chats and could give the White House positive PR.


About eight hours later, Epicenter writer Ryan Singel wrote a scathing reply begging Obama to stay off Twitter and focus on more important issues: running the country for instance.

Since this squabble, Obama's Twitter account has logged 548 tweets. The tone of this feed is less formal than that of the official White House Twitter feed which is run unapologetically by his staff. The White House feed has logged 831 tweets. Both of these accounts were created in May 2009.

Obama himself didn't tweet until the recent crisis in Haiti. On January 18, Obama pushed the 'send' button for a tweet written by someone else that was published on another's account.
Our technologically adept nation understands that much of the information we receive is given to us by staff members and personal assistants. We don't expect famous people to take time out of their busy days to fill us in. And, as far as the President is concerned, it is reassuring that he is too concerned with the nation's affairs to worry about projecting his personal image on a social networking site.
It's been a few months shy of a year, but I think both columnists got their wishes granted. The White House and the President have made a greater effort to connect with the people virtually, but the President has not neglected his duties to become more popular.

Read more...

Is Google Trying too Hard?

Monday, February 8, 2010

Most of us are very familiar with the concept of a status update. We are accustomed to everyday conversations about someone's Facebook status. Twitter uses a similar concept with its Twitter updates.

The idea behind Facebook statuses and Twitter updates is to notify predetermined friends or followers what a person is doing at a certain time.

That same idea has now piqued the interest of Google. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google will announce the addition of a new feature on Gmail sometime this week. This feature will be similar to a Facebook status update. Gmail users will now be able to inform their e-mail contacts of their whereabouts and recent news.

A problem with this feature, according to Mashable's Adam Ostrow, is the simple fact that a Gmail user's contact list may not be who they would normally choose to receive their status updates and vice versa.

With the addition of Facebook and Twitter in the competitive world of social networking, it is without a doubt becoming difficult for email services to maintain existing users, while appealing to potential ones. The addition of a new Gmail feature is just another way that Google is trying to stay on top of the competition.

Read more...

The Lack of Pepsi

Sunday, February 7, 2010


Watching the commercials during the Super Bowl has become near a tradition since it became a media blitz to sell products. While watching this year it may have become apparent that there was no Pepsi Commercial. This broke a 23 year streak of Pepsi having a commercial during the Super Bowl and it was snapped due to Pepsi's interest in social media.


The Super Bowl was broadcast by CBS this year and they wanted $3 million dollars for a 30-second commercial. Instead of investing in this as Pepsi traditionally has they have decided to pour their advertising dollars into social media. This movement into social media is what Pepsi is calling the Pepsi Refresh Project.

The point of the Pepsi Refresh Project is for Pepsi to become more involved with its customers. "The project is about creating a movement, not just a moment." said Bonin Bough, Pepsi's global director of digital and social media. Pepsi is donating $1 million dollars in February and is committed to $20 million dollars overall to social causes and community projects.

Pepsi is not the only big company getting into the social media craze. Budweiser let its customers vote on its Facebook site which commercials they wanted to see and Monster.com's Facebook page had videos on it of the fiddling beaver from its Super Bowl commercials.

Read more...

Writing is Not Enough For Journalists

These days everybody is practically a journalist. Typically, people wrote only when the teacher told them to, but real journalists wrote and reported stories outside the classroom.

The Internet has made it easier for anybody to become a journalist. Blogs and sites such as Facebook and Twitter allow people to write what they want, when they want.

Therefore, people who desire to earn a living as a journalist will need to acquire new traits in order to get hired or accepted into journalism school.

According to Robert Niles, a writer for the Online Journalism Review, journalists must be able to discover and analyze new information that would be of interest to their audience.

In order for this to happen, journalists are going to have to develop several characteristics, including strong analytic skills and the ability to uncover a story.

Just as the publishing market is competitive, so too is the market for journalists with numerous different skills.


I think it is very important to have multiple skills. In today's environment, it's not enough to just be able to write.

Social journalism is imperative for journalists. They have to be able to engage their audience and find and share stories that would be of interest to readers.

Read more...

Reporters banned from Olympic site

In Vancouver Canada the Olympic officials have banned news reporters from the site where freestyle and snowboarding events are to take place. The site has been plagued by a lack of snow. Therefore the officials closed the site to the media and the public as helicopters and 300 lorries were used to bring snow down to the site from higher altitudes. Vanoc vice-president Tim Gayda assures the community that there is nothing to hide as he is thinking of safety first.



As far as a ban on the public that is understandable but the media should be able to view the ferrying of snow down to the site. If there is nothing to hide then why not let some of the reporters or just camera men in. Of course since it's in Canada the laws may be a little different for this sort of thing. However a complete ban just does not make much sense. This is the Olympics, the news coverage is crazy so to hear that the media has been banned from an area is really hard to fully comprehend, and of course, the reporters who are there are not too happy.

Read more...

Stewart Burns Fox on Political Standing

Saturday, February 6, 2010

John Stewart, known for bashing media personalities, gives toughest criticism of Fox New than ever before seen on Fox News.


Fox News has always been criticized for being a part of the conservative movement by many on the left. "cyclonic perpetual emotion machine" that has "taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into a full-fledged panic about the next coming of Chairman Mao," said Stewart to Bill O'Reilly.

The interview was shown on Bill O'Reilly's show, The O'Reilly Factor, Fox's most popular show. However, much of the interview was cut out, in particular the parts where Stewart had a lot more to say.

Stewart has been known to stray from his Comedy Central comedy into more serious political media and gained a lot of attention for it. For example, In 2004 on CNN's "Crossfire" Stewart claimed the left right debate format was "hurting America," three months before the program was canceled.

Also Stewart took a jab at Jim Carmer, host of "Mad Money" from CNBC for being Wall Street cheerleaders, and that "the financial news industry is not just guilty of a sin of omission but a sin of commission," said Stewart.

Mr. O'Reilly defended Fox but citing a poll from last month by the Public Policy Polling organization that Fox was more widely trusted than any other television news organization. Also Fox News is the most-watched cable news channel and caused a lot of controversy and high ratings in the first year of the Obama administration by appearing to be the network of the opposition.

Mr. O'Reilly said Thursday: "It was interesting to hear Mr. Stewart put forth that Fox News is in business to help Republicans. I rebutted that, and you can decide who had the stronger argument."




Read more...

The Sharks and Fish of The Media Ocean

Friday, February 5, 2010

Big ideas come from little places. It's been said for years under all types of circumstances, and local media stations across the nation are one of the perfect examples of this. But if big media is overtaking the local ones, what happens when these little places, no longer exist?


The media has been controlled by the media giants for years, but too often, these media giants cause local stations to go out of business.

Our media is much like an ocean. This media ocean consists of a few sharks, which are like the big media companies, and many fish, which are like the local stations. As the sharks eat up more and more fish, the once healthy and balanced ocean is now an unwholesome, noxious one.

Ted Turner is the founder of CNN, one of the media sharks. But he is also the first to say that the biggest ideas come from local stations. Without these local stations, healthy capital markets turn into deteriorating ones.

Smaller stations are so important because without them there is a loss of localism and democratic debate. In local stations, the mission and programming is different. When large media sharks dominate, it undercuts the democracy. The big companies don't compete the same and are not antagonistic. It is the little companies who know how to compete, which results in the biggest and best ideas.

"No one should underestimate the danger," Turner said. "Big media companies wan to eliminate all ownership limits."

With the elimination of these ownership limits, the media power will be in the hands of only a few corporations and individuals.

"This is a fight about freedom," Turner said. "The freedom of independent entrepreneurs to start and run a media business, and the freedom of citizens to get news, information, and entertainment from a wide variety of sources, at least some of which are truly independent and not run by people facing the pressure of quarterly earnings reports."

The media sharks dominating the local organizations leads to many questions. What will programming be like when it is produced for nothing but a profit? What will news be like when there are no independent news organizations to go after the important stories that big corporations avoid? Perhaps the most important question is a simple one, as free people, do we want to find out?



Read more...

Could Blogging Be Your Ticket to Success?

Sometimes it only takes one minor change to make some major changes in a persons life.


Ryan Sholin began blogging when he was a graduate student at San Jose State University in the field of Mass Communications. With his first amateur blog, entitled "Big Silver Robot," Sholin quickly learned that uses and importance of blogging.

"You don't get to act like someone who has ideas unless there's some evidence of your ideas out there in the world," Sholin said.

Although there may be a lot of truth to that statement, statistics are showing that young people today are not taking advantage of the technology available to get their ideas out into the world. According to cyberjournalist.net, blogging has dropped amount teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults since 2006.

Teenagers today may not realize the impact a simple blog can have on their future, but luckily for Sholin he discovered early on in life how beneficial they can be. In 2007, Sholin worked at a newspaper where he posted a blog that thousands of people read every day, including possible employers.

"This blog has been instrumental in getting every full-time job I've had in the news buisness," Sholin said.

And it's never too soon to start thinking about your future. Teens as young as high school and college ages can take advantage of the perks blogging has to offer by getting their names out into the world earlier rather than later. No matter what you're blogging about, the fact that you are blogging is what's important.

"Pointing out the obvious to an audience that might not have spotted it yet and then repeating myself over and over again has become, shall we say, my thing," Sholin said.

What is the point in all of this you might ask? Well, like Nike says, just do it! Whether it's getting your own personal website or just starting your own blog, a minor decision like that can have a big impact on your future. And even if you feel like you have nothing to say, you do, and you never know who else is going to be interested in it too.

Read more...

James O'Keefe's Tactics Questioned

Filmmaker and activist James O'Keefe made headlines again recently following his Jan. 25 arrest in New Orleans. Best known for his controversial 2009 undercover videos concerning the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in which he and a partner posed as a pimp and a prostitute seeking business advice, O'Keefe, along with three other men, now faces a charge of entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony. The charge stems from his attempt to interfere with phone lines at the office of Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana by entering her office disguised as a telephone technician while secretly filming the episode.


In interviews with Sean Hannity and Andrew Breitbart's Big Government, O'Keefe claims to have been investigating constituent complaints that Sen. Landrieu's phones had not been working, giving them no access to her New Orleans office during a period of critical health care debates. When addressing the ethical nature of his behavior, O'Keefe has justified his actions, likening his stories to those of well known undercover journalism stories such as PrimeTimeLive's Food Lion story.

However, as Greg Marx has written in an article today for the Columbia Journalism Review, O'Keefe's argument stands on shaky ground. Pointing to a list created by Bob Steele of Poynter Online, Marx argues that good undercover journalism involving hidden cameras must meet two criteria. First, the information must be of "profound importance," reveal "great system failure," or be able to prevent harm to individuals. Second, the list requires that "all other alternatives for obtaining the same information be exhausted." According to Marx, O'Keefe's current project involving Sen. Landrieu meets neither of these criteria, as it had clear political motivations and the problem did not require such serious measures.

Why must journalists worry about radicals in the vein of O'Keefe? Undercover journalism, if done correctly, can be an excellent tool. However, as Marx again points out, if undercover journalism is done incorrectly or insensitively it can hurt the reputation of all journalists. In addition, information obtained undercover is not as likely to be believed by the public, further diminishing the credibility of journalism. Marx argues that O'Keefe's brand of journalism falls in this category in several ways.

I highly agree with Marx on the issue of James' O'Keefe's "reporting." While I understand that certain situations and stories require the use of disguises or false identities, such situations should be handled with a greater sensitivity than O'Keefe demonstrates. Another point Marx argues that I agree with is that O'Keefe fails to show his evidence in the context of a traditional news report, making his "reports" overly sensationalized and based merely in shock value. While some may herald O'Keefe as a new type of reporter, I hope that media consumers continue to understand and condemn the flaws within his work.

Read more...

  © Blogger template On The Road by Ourblogtemplates.com 2009

Back to TOP