The four best online and multimedia professional journalism groups | Will Sullivan’s Journerdism: “Now, on to The Four:
* The Online News Association
* The National Press Photographer Association
* The Society for News Design
* Sports Shooter”
Category: Journalism
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Anna and the Astronaut Trigger a Week of Tabloid News
PEJ:
For the first time this year, “tabloid gold” fever seized at least some of the news media last week in a significant way, according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index from February 4 to February 9. Though it only made up two days of coverage, the sudden death of the Playmate turned heiress turned reality star was the No. 3 story in the news last week, almost edging out a bloody week in Iraq.
And that may be understating the feel of the coverage. The bosomy blonde’s demise consumed a staggering 50% of the cable newshole PEJ examined on February 8 and 9. Those are levels reminiscent of those pre-9/11 celebrity sagas—think Princess Di and JFK Jr.
Here.
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Crunks ’06: The Year in Media Errors and Corrections
Regret The Error:
Gather ’round for our annual collection of the funny, shocking, sad and disturbing media errors and corrections from the past year. From typos that celebrate Queen Elizabeth and her remarkable egg-laying abilities, to media hoaxes, unreliable sources, the Sago disaster and apologies for mistakes nearly 120 years ago, it was a good year for Regret. Though not a banner one for our media brethren.
We dubbed 2005 the Year of Consequences. This latest was the Year of the Belated Apology. Read on for the details and, in our vernacular, The Crunks.Here.
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Al Qaeda Increasingly Reliant on Media
NYT:
In recent years, Al Qaeda has formed a special media production division called Al Sahab to produce videos about leaders like Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri, terrorism experts say. The group largely once relied on Arab television channels like Al Jazeera to broadcast its videos and taped messages.
Al Sahab, whose name means the cloud, has continued to draw on a video library featuring everything from taped suicide messages by the Sept. 11 hijackers to images of gun battles and bombings spearheaded by Al Qaeda and others, said Marwan Shehadeh, an expert on Islamist movements with the Vision Research Institute in Amman who has close ties to jihadists in Jordan and Syria.
Here.
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Covering War Crimes
Roy Gutman, DART, via Romenesko:
For example: a deportation of Bosnian Muslims from a village on the Drina by the Serbian state railways in sealed passenger cars—which could only have happened on the orders of the top officials in the state. Upon hearing about the existence of concentration camps, I made an enormous effort to put together a complete picture of what went on in one place—I chose Omarska. It was not just because of the atrocity, but because in a fixed location under state control, any crime can be attributed to the state.After reporting that there was a string of concentration camps throughout Bosnia, I had a rather rude awakening. What I discovered was that I was not just up against the rump Yugoslav state and its criminal leadership, but the US and nearly every other western government as well, who had every ability to find out the facts on their own but chose not to. The US government response to my initial stories on Omarska—confirmation, denial, and then after several weeks of supposed careful collation of intelligence, a more considered denial—spoke volumes about the West’s overall attitude toward Bosnia, toward European Muslims, toward war crimes, and toward genocide.
Here.
