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.
Several days ago, New America Media invited this writer to attend a meeting of New York City-based ethnic journalists who would be talking about their articles for the tenth anniversary of 9/11. Asked about my plans – this writer hadn’t been planning to share – he spoke in tongues, that is, his response was as articulate as a person speaking with his tongue flailing the roof of the mouth and the sides of his teeth, upper and lower. Caught off guard, he couldn’t articulate, didn’t enunciate.
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.
Yep, this is late but news worth: New Jersey and New York ranked high for states with strong shield laws for journalists. NJ even provides protection to student journalists.
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.
The Daily News reported:
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.
[Missing NYT Sub-Headline: Murdoch-ian Journalism Made Milquetoast of a lot of New York City Politicians]
July 9, 2011
By SARAH LYALL
LONDON — In 2004, Clare Short, a Labour member of Parliament, learned what could happen to British politicians who criticized the country’s unforgiving tabloids. At a lunch in Westminster, Ms. Short mentioned in passing that she did not care for the photographs of saucy, topless women that appear every day on Page 3 of the populist tabloid The Sun, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. “I’d like to take the pornography out of our press,” she said.
Big Mistake.
Read full story here.
The Ethics Committee of the Society of Professional Journalism Decries Checkbook Journalism – Again – With News Coverage of Casey Anthony
No Surprise Here!
That’s the assessment of WNYC’s Jami Floyd, whose opinion should not be ignored:
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.
New York Times headline: Strauss-Kahn Accuser’s Call Alarmed Prosecutors
Twenty-eight hours after a housekeeper at the Sofitel New York said she was sexually assaulted by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, she spoke by phone to a boyfriend in an immigration jail in Arizona. Investigators with the Manhattan district attorney’s office learned the call had been recorded and had it translated from a “unique dialect of Fulani,” a language from the woman’s native country, Guinea, according to a well-placed law enforcement official.
When the conversation was translated — a job completed only this Wednesday — investigators were alarmed: “She says words to the effect of, ‘Don’t worry, this guy has a lot of money. I know what I’m doing,’ ” the official said.
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.
Goes to Utah Legislature and the Utah Governor “for plunging their state into an abyss of secrecy through the most regressive piece of freedom of information legislation in recent history.”
Read entire article here.
NYC February 28 Rally Against Suppression of Occupy Movement
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012What: Rally & March
When: 5:00 p.m. Tuesday, February 28
Where: Union Square, New York City (north end)
Support is growing for a non-violent mass action Tuesday, February 28 in NYC against the suppression and repression of the Occupy Movement, raising the demands, “Stand with the Occupy Movement! No Rubber Bullets – No Beatings – No Tear Gas – No Mass Arrests, Don’t Suppress OWS. Drop All the Charges Against Occupiers.” The General Assembly of Occupy Wall Street reached consensus February 11 in support of the Call for Mass Action Against the Suppression of the Occupy Movement, and specifically in support of the February 28 Mass Action at Union Square in NYC.
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Tags:NYPD, OCCUPY, OCCUPY WALL STREET, protests, rally, Revolutionary Books
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