NewsTrust - Ethics in Journalism - Most Recent Stories

The Climate-Change Wars Begin This Summer

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Magazine - By Jonathan Chait - May. 22 (Special Report) - The biggest piece of President Obama’s second-term agenda is his widely expected plan for the Environmental Protection Agency to issue new carbon regulations for power plants, a move that could bring the United States in line with the greenhouse-gas-redu

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Society of Professional Journalists: SPJ Code of Ethics

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

spj.org - By SPJ ethics committee - May. 22 (Statement) - Seek Truth and Report It - Minimize Harm - Act Independently - Be Accountable -

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60 Minutes and the Billionaire Agenda: Part 1, “Counterinsurgency Cops”

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Richard Eskow - May. 20 (Opinion) - This Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes was a brilliant case study in the media’s ability to manipulate the public mind. The entire hour is worth studying, if only as one of the most illuminating and sophisticated examples of media manipulation in recent memory.

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How far did PBS go to avoid offending a sponsor?

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New Yorker - By Jane Mayer - May. 20 (News Report) - When Koch joined the boards of WGBH and WNET, it seemed to mark an ideological inroad, enabling him to exert influence over a network with a prominent news operation. Meanwhile, the member stations, by having Koch as a trustee, were inoculating themselves against charges of liberal bias, and positioning themselves to receive substantial new donations.

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Being a Democracy Hating, Corporate Power-Defending Newspaper Owner Runs Deep in the Koch Family

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Yasha Levine - May. 19 (Opinion) - There’s a rumor going around that the Koch brothers are interested in buying up the Tribune Company, which includes the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun… And there’s a lot of speculation about what would happen if they did. Some worry, and rightly so, that the Kochs—whose combined wealth makes them the biggest billionaires on the planet—would integrate the Tribune Co. with the rest of their free-market thinktank-industrial complex, and turn its newly acquired news media property into a gigantic business propaganda machine. Half the reporters at the Los Angeles Times even took a vote saying they’d quit if the Kochs bought the paper

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Howard Kurtz’s Belated Comeuppance: The Media Critic's Firing Comes After a Long History of Journalistic Abuses

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Robert Perry - May. 06 (News Report) - When one looks at the mess that is modern journalism in the United States, a chief culprit has been Howard Kurtz. Yet, his downfall did not come because of his smearing of fellow journalists – like Gary Webb and Helen Thomas – but rather from a blog post that unfairly criticized basketball player Jason Collins after he revealed that he was gay.

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Inside the Collapsing Media Empire of Deceased GOP Sleaze-Peddler Andrew Breitbart

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Mark Ames, Max blumenthal - May. 05 (Special Report) - Breitbart, the adopted son of a wealthy West Los Angeles restauranteur, used his privilege to immiserate the most marginalized, impoverished, widely demonized groups of Americans. He was a faithful errand boy for rich, Scrooge McDuck tycoons like Peter Thiel, Foster Friess, and the Koch Brothers, wielding smear journalism against anyone or any interest that threatened their power — usually African-Americans or groups like ACORN, serving impoverished, neglected inner city communities.

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The Right Wing Cult Machine Exposed

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Thom Hartmann - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - a cult is a group or sect bound together by adoration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc. A cult promises you redemption. It tells you that if you do what it says, and as it believes, you will be protected from the evil people that are out to get you and the rest of society. A cult purges the non-believers. And it actively tries to vilify all those who are not part of the cult

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Koch Brothers Making Play for Tribune's Newspapers

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Amy Chozick - Apr. 21 (News Report) - Three years ago, Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists and supporters of libertarian causes, held a seminar of like-minded, wealthy political donors at the St. Regis Resort in Aspen, Colo. They laid out a three-pronged …

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USA Today: Venezuelans Voted for High Unemployment and Food Shortages

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

FAIR - By Peter Hart - Apr. 20 (Comment) - Venezuelans know a different reality. As noted by FAIR, poverty was cut in half from 2002-10; extreme poverty was even more dramatic. Access to healthcare and free education increased. As Mark Weisbrot argued in the Guardian, this record was a notable turnaround from the pre-Chavez years. Unemployment is currently estimated to be 8 percent in Venezuela–but it was above 14 percent when Chavez took office in 1999. Inflation is estimated at 20.9 percent–but it peaked near 120 percent in 1996. That's not to say there aren't significant problems in the country. But a news report that chooses to ignore this part of the Chavez legacy is a bit like saying Venezuelans have been fooled about the state of their own lives.

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Obama Whistleblower Prosecutions Lead To Chilling Effect On Press

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Matt Sledge - Apr. 16 (News Report) - It was an investigative story clearly in the public interest, shedding new light on the government’s long-running targeted-killing program in Pakistan. But now Landay, a veteran national security reporter for the McClatchy newspaper chain, is concerned that the Obama administration could next investigate him in hopes of finding the sources for “top-secret U.S. intelligence reports” cited in the story. “Do I think that they could come after me?” Landay asked, in an interview with The Huffington Post. “Yes.”

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"The Kissinger Cables": Three Years After "Collateral Murder," WikiLeaks Explores U.S. Diplomacy

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Apr. 08 (News Report) - The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has just published "the Kissinger Cables," 1.7 million U.S. diplomatic and intelligence documents from 1973 to 1976 that include many once-secret memos written by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. While the documents have been available to the public at the National Archives, WikiLeaks has created a searchable online database to allow anyone in the world to quickly search them.

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At National Conference for Media Reform, Activists Hope to Stop Murdoch, Koch-Backed Consolidation

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman,Juan Gonzalez - Apr. 05 (Special Report) - We broadcast from the National Conference for Media Reform in Denver, where some 2,000 people are expected to gather to look at how media, technology and democracy intersect. One of the major topics this year is media consolidation. As newspapers struggle to survive, billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch have expressed interest in buying Tribune Company, which includes the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is also weighing a bid for the Los Angeles Times in a market where he already owns two television stations. We're joined by Craig Aaron, president and CEO of Free Press, the main organizer of the National Conference for Media Reform. [includes rush transcript]

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Iraq War Actors Have No Shame

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Adil E. Shamoo - Apr. 04 (Opinion) - As wretched as the Iraq War was, the absence of any meaningful accountability for the U.S. policymakers and pundits who made the catastrophe happen is nearly as stomach-turning. Every day the same faces show up on the TV talk shows and Op-Ed pages spouting more of their “wisdom,”

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National Review heralds the ‘wonderland’ of tar sands with a photo of a blighted hellscape

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Jess Zimmerman - Apr. 04 (Opinion) - this is the first time I’ve seen the magazine run a cover that literally looks like a Photoshop someone mocked up to make everyone on the masthead look like assholes.

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The fun-filled ocean resort at Guantánamo Bay |

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Glenn Greenwald - Mar. 28 (Advocacy) - A growing hunger strike among detainees is mocked by gullible journalists spouting familiar Potemkin Village propaganda If you're looking for a fun activity-filled resort to take your family for a summer vacation, you simply cannot do better than Club GTMO, according to a new glossy travel guide just published by Robert Johnson, the Defense Editor of Business Insider, under the guise of a news article. Scrumptious meals. Video games galore for the kids. Outdoor sports. Newspapers from your hometown delivered by smiling bellhops to the front door of your villa. Picturesque Caribbean vistas. All that and more can be yours - provided that you're "compliant". What more could vacationers - or prisoners kept in a cage for more than a decade with no charges thousands of miles away from their family - possibly want? They are, proclaims Johnson, treated "absurdly well". Not just well: absurdly well. They are, he actually writes, lavished with "resort treatment". The context for Johnson's glowing ...

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Senate Unanimously Votes Against Cuts to Social Security: Media Don’t Notice

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - By Dean Baker - Mar. 26 (News Analysis) - There are few areas where the corruption of the national media is more apparent than in its treatment of Social Security. Most of the elite media have made it clear in both their opinion and news pages that they want to see benefits cut. In keeping with this position they highlight the views of political figures who push cuts to the program, treating them as responsible, while those who oppose cuts are ignored or mocked.

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Washington Post Defends Not Running Article On Iraq Media Failure

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Michael Calderone - Mar. 24 (News Analysis) - Mitchell noted that the Outlook section did run what he called a “misleading, cherry-picking” piece by Post media writer Paul Farhi, in which Farhi claims the media didn’t fail during the 2002-2003 rush to war. The Post’s decision to run Farhi’s piece defending the press, and not Mitchell’s, got a lot of attention Sunday morning on Twitter. It was especially noteworthy given that the paper’s editorial board –- which helped promote the Bush administration’s bogus rationale for invading Iraq -– was silent on last Tuesday’s 10th anniversary of the start of the conflict.

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The WPost’s Unbridled Arrogance

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Robert Parry - Mar. 23 (News Analysis) - Perhaps more than any news organization, the Washington Post steered the United States into the illegal invasion of Iraq. But a Post editorial, which belatedly takes note of the war’s tenth anniversary, admits to no mistakes and acknowledges no lessons learned

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Democracy Now! Iraq War Timeline Recaps a Decade of Independent Reporting on Occupation and Protest

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Renee Feltz - Mar. 20 (Special Report) - watch video highlights from a decade of Democracy Now! coverage of the Iraq War and the peace movement. It was 10 years ago, on March 19, 2003, that the United States invaded Iraq on the false pretext that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Six weeks later, President George W. Bush stood under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished" and declared an end to major military combat operations. But Operation Iraqi Freedom would lead to an almost nine-year U.S. military occupation. Democracy Now! producer Renée Feltz explains how the timeline works and highlights some of the featured videos

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Bribery Allegations Surfaced Against WSJ in China

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Devlin Barett, Evan Perez - Mar. 17 (News Analysis) - The Justice Department last year opened an investigation into allegations that employees at The Wall Street Journal bribed Chinese officials for information. A search by the Journal's parent company found no evidence to support the claim.

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NYT Debates Hugo Chavez–Minus the Debate

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

FAIR - By Peter Hart - Mar. 08 (Review) - "On Eve of His Funeral, Debating Chávez’s Legacy" is the headline over William Neuman's piece in the New York Times today (3/8/13). Funny headline, since there was no one in the Times' "debate" who argued that Chávez left much of anything.

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AP: Chavez Wasted His Money on Healthcare When He Could Have Built Gigantic Skyscrapers

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

FAIR - By Jim Naureckas - Mar. 08 (News Analysis) - Chavez invested Venezuela's oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world's tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.

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Bernanke joins the ranks of economic ‘hippies’

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

seattletimes.com - By Paul Krugman - Mar. 02 (Opinion) - Now, as then, this consensus has seemed impenetrable to counterarguments, no matter how well grounded in evidence. And now, as then, leaders of the consensus continue to be regarded as credible even though they’ve been wrong about everything (why do people keep treating Alan Simpson as a wise man?) while critics of the consensus are regarded as foolish hippies even though all their predictions — about interest rates, about inflation, about the dire effects of austerity — have come true.

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Bradley Manning: The Face of Heroism

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Glenn Greenwald - Mar. 02 (Opinion) - "Manning's motivations in leaking, he said, was to 'spark a domestic debate of the role of the military and foreign policy in general', he said, and 'cause society to reevaluate the need and even desire to engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore their effect on people who live in that environment every day.'

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