This year has given us simply too many worthy contenders for FAIR’s annual P.U.-litzers–recognizing the stinkiest journalism of the year. A big part of the problem was that so many outlets were striving to distinguish themselves with especially awful coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. So to note those lowlights, we bring you a special installment of P.U.-litzers: The OWS edition.

Read full story here.

What follows is what  might have been said or referred to if this writer had had the presence of mind many wish for when a signature moment beckons them to rise to the occasion:  From the Center for Constitutional Rights regarding a panel discussion, September 12: The 9/11 Decade and the Decline of U.S. Democracy.

In response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush shredded the U.S. Constitution, trampled on the Bill of Rights, discarded the Geneva Conventions, and heaped scorn on the domestic torture statute and the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

As we mark the 10th anniversary of the terrible events of September 11, 2001, none of us has any desire to play down the horrors of that day, but two wrongs do not make a right, and, in response to the attacks, the Bush administration engineered and presided over the most sustained period of constitutional decay in our history.

Moreover, although George W. Bush entered the first decade of the 21st century by dismantling the rights that are fundamental to the identity of the United States and the security of its people, Barack Obama ended the decade by failing to fully reinstate those rights. Through his own indecision, or through ferocious opposition in Congress, he has been unable to close the infamous prison at Guantanamo Bay, as promised, and has also refused to even contemplate holding anyone in the Bush administration accountable for their crimes.

 

A live streaming broadcast has also been planned.

By Michael Booth, New Jersey Law Journal, February 11, 2011
The state Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on whether a blogger, being sued for defamation over her postings on a web bulletin board, can cloak herself in the New Jersey Shield Law and refuse to disclose a source.

The justices are being asked whether the Legislature, in the relevant portion of the Shield Law, N.J.S.A. 2A:84A-21a(b), was meant to protect a class of writers that did not exist when it was enacted in 1977: those who post their writings on their own websites and on other online media.

Read entire article here.

A Bronx teen said two cops roughed him up when he mouthed off after one of them stepped in a pile of dog doo.

After he was beaten, according to the News, the youth, Tyre Davis, contacted Internal Affairs and the NYPD duo – Joseph Murphy, 26, and Jose Ocasio, 28 – was arrested. There’s no mention of a lawyer helping the youth. There’s no mention of how the News got the story.

But if this story is accurate, it’s impressive that this kid was savvy enough to fight to protect his rights. Hoorah!

Headline: ‘It smells like doo-doo’ quip prompted cops’ attack, Bronx teen Tyre Davis says – Full story here.

July 9, 2011
By SARAH LYALL

No Surprise Here!

SJP reports:

The revelation this week that ABC News paid a second source close to the Casey Anthony murder trial – raising the total price of exclusive coverage to $215,000 – underscores a growing trend of buying news content and it stands to undermine journalistic credibility, the Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee said today.

ABC News and other networks have paid licensing fees for exclusive information in the past, and those practiceshave been challenged by SPJ as undermining news legitimacy and creating an environment of “truth-selling.”

Read full story here.

Take the Duke Lacrosse case, in which the district attorney of Durham County, NC, Mike Nifong, failed every measure of prosecutorial conduct and judgment. He tried his case in the media for nearly a year, failed to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense and court even when he had it, and he was ultimately disbarred, fined and sentenced to a symbolic one day in jail.

In the DSK case, Vance is to be credited for his due diligence and coming to terms early on with the impossibility of proceeding with a accuser lacking credibility. At the same time, he and his investigators had to know what they were up against – a fully financed defense, with its own top-notch investigators that would no doubt uncover the same damning information about the accuser.

Read full article here.

This news feeding frenzy reminds this writer of the Tawana Brawley paroxysm of news, fact, hysteria, race, class. bullshit and more. This is a knee jerk response to breaking news. Something less knee-jerk is in the offing.

Maybe.

Read entire article here.

By Peter Hart, March 1, 2011

The New York Times reports its new poll (3/1/11):

As labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, according to the latestNew York Times/CBS News poll.

That’s big enough news, and once again cuts against the People-Don’t-Support-These-Overpaid-Union-Workers trope.

But there’s more. When the poll asked about fixing the deficit, people had a message rarely heard in the media: Read entire FAIR blog here.