Biased Coverage

Fairness, balance, objectivity, truth, bias…  These words get used a lot in discussions of journalistic ethics. But not every journalist (or every ethicist) agrees either on their exact definitions, or on how they fit in to the greater project of journalism.  Most would agree that bias isn’t good. But David Poulson, associate director of Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism argues the opposite in a March 6 post at Great...Go to full story

Murray Brewster in The Canadian Press reports that a "sobering" email went out last week "to television reporters and personalities with the rights to cover the 2010 Vancouver Games." It warned journalists to stop hugging Canadian athletes. 

Brewster writes: "Bursting displays of patriotism among journalists over the last two weeks has given the country some cringe-worthy Olympic moments, especially for those who cling to the...Go to full story

Last November, StinkyJournalism drew attention to a job advertisement from the Church of Scientology seeking experienced journalists to further their mission of "Investigative Reporting in the Public Interest." Now it looks like that job may have been filled.  Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post reports that three veteran journalists--“a Pulitzer Prize winner, a former '60 Minutes' producer and the former executive director of Investigative Reporters and...Go to full story

This week (through Sunday, February 28) NewsTrust, a public journalism rating site, is hosting a hunt for bad journalism. Working with students from a class at Stanford University, the NewsTrust blog will feature a new set of bad stories every day, seeking viewer participation to rate the site's choices as well as suggest others. The blog announced the hunt Monday, saying the exercise is intended to “highlight journalism with serious flaws: news reports and opinions that...Go to full story

StinkyJournalism recently wrote about ethical issues in the partnership between the Washington Post and upstart financial news service, the Fiscal Times.

Printing content from outside news providers risks a newspaper’s credibility, especially if the story emerges with fairness or balance problems. Specifically, the Washington Post was criticized after publishing a Fiscal Times story many argued was unbalanced.

Recently, the New York Times...Go to full story

Andrew Breitbart, the publisher and commentator behind Breitbart.com and BigHollywood, launched his new site BigJournalism yesterday. In an interview with Business Insider, Breitbart says the site is “going to war with biased old-media -- and even new media types,” and that he’s “trying to fill a huge market void for original reporting and fact based journalism" for the "silent minority around the world." He calls his new site a place...Go to full story

A quick note for climate reporters and interested bloggers working in the Northern Hemisphere this winter: Just because it’s snowing where you sit, doesn’t mean you have disproved global warming. StinkyJournalism has written before about how easy it is to confuse weather with climate in science reporting. Climate change skeptics often harp on stories where a tenuous connection is drawn between a single weather event, like a large wildfire, and the broad issue of...Go to full story

Newsweek is defending its decision to not inform readers that one of its reporters, Yuval Levin, was a bioethics adviser with the George W. Bush Administration. Since President Barrack Obama took office, Levin has been writing for the magazine.

Blogger Daniel Tencer of The Raw reports on the issue in a November 17 post. He says that in a recent article, "Levin argued that the Democrats missed an opportunity to divide the Republican Party by not including tax...Go to full story

Has the New York Times changed its ethical standards? The paper recently refused to publish a slew of controversially obtained emails. On November 20, Andrew Revkin, Environment Reporter, for The New York Times, says he chose not to link to the emails because “the documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.” While Revkin...Go to full story

In a December 2 post for McGuire on Media, a blog on the Arizona State University Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s website, professor Tim McGuire addresses the media ethics involved in the recent Tiger Woods media "circus".

The Los Angeles Times called the coverage “smotherage”, running an entire article dedicated to the sheer volume of it. Brett Haber writes in a USA Today column, “‘People want...Go to full story