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You will recall that last Friday, I blogged a report that CNN Israel had fired all its Jewish journalists. Several of my blogging friends were afraid to run with the story, largely because it came from a blog that most of us had never seen before. I ran with it (although as a "Report" and not as confirmed fact) because I found the fact that they had all the journalists' names and that one of them was confirmed to me independently by someone who knew him, convincing. CNN has finally responded to the rumor. The response is not going to...

A former staffer for Bay State Sen. John F. Kerry has been charged with leaking the names of CIA operatives, including one who was involved in the interrogation of terror suspects held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and Kerry’s office.

The hoopla surrounding the ABC News interview with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s second ex-wife, Marianne Gingrich, has raised a question for conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh: How come journalists aren’t held to the same standard they hold those they investigate to? On his Thursday show, Limbaugh asked that question and said that it was appropriate to do so since the media is no longer just reporting, but passing judgment as well. “That’s another thing, this always gets me — are journalists monogamous?” Limbaugh asked. “Are journalists faithful? Are they as clean and pure as the wind-driven snow? This...

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has written permission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.” According to DHS, the definition of personal identifiable information can consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.”

A Wikipedia-style website launched on Monday which provides information about the journalists behind the bylines. News Transparency is a creation of Ira Stoll, the founder of another website called FutureOfCapitalism.com and the former managing editor of the now defunct New York Sun. In a statement on its home page, newstransparency.com, the website said its goal is to help users "find out more about the people who produce the news" and "hold them accountable, the same way that journalists hold other powerful institutions accountable, by posting reviews and sharing information." News Transparency features an alphabetical list of hundreds of journalists and...

After 30 months of unemployment, 400 applications, and only three in-person interviews, I stood looking at my last unemployment benefit without a job in sight. The temptation was to frame it, since it marks one of those transitions in life that merits being remembered. But I needed the money more than a memento, so I took my last unemployment check to the bank and deposited it -- $367 for some necessities. Food, rent, gas. My last unemployment check was $160 less than my usual weekly benefit, but still a welcome boost to my sagging finances. How I will miss those...

We have been in the thick of the fighting, but also cut off from it. Dozens of us journalists have been trapped for days in the luxury Rixos Hotel, kept there by government enforcers whose weaponry has convinced us of the wisdom of staying put. Once in awhile, though, the news comes to us. Take the reports that Seif al-Islam, a favored son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and one-time heir-apparent to his desert regime, had been captured by rebel fighters as they stormed through the city. But here he was, confident and smiling in his camouflage pants and army-green...

-excerpt- "I do not think it is necessary or in Turkey's interests to be cracking down," Clinton said, adding that Turkey's institutions could withstand the scrutiny and debate that a free press brings. "It seems to me inconsistent with all the other advances Turkey has made."

At least 10 people, mostly journalists, were injured on Friday when police tried to stop clashes between pro-reform demonstrators and government supporters in central Amman. Police used batons to disperse the clashes outside city hall, beating and injuring nine journalists who were wearing orange vests marked "press," an AFP reporter at the scene witnessed. The wounded included an AFP photographer and a female Islamist activist. "We were beaten by police, although we were wearing special press vests," said the photographer. "We thought we would be safe when we stood next to the police and away from the clashes." A photographer...

Iran and Cuba together have forced more journalists into exile over the past year than all other countries combined, a survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday. "Nearly 70 journalists were forced into exile over the past 12 months, with more than half coming from Iran and Cuba, two of the world's most repressive nations," the report said. "Iran, which has waged a massive, two-year-long crackdown on the independent press, and Cuba, which freed journalists from prison only to force them to leave their homeland, each sent 18 journalists into exile," it said. The survey said most --...

This was a big catch by Brian Wedemeyer from the Arizona Independent. A Boston Globe reporter hid information on Barack Obama’s father for at least two years as she worked on a novel about the man’s life. I posted the story on our web site and then watched to see what kind of reaction, if any, there would be. A small part of me wondered if The Independent — something we have worked so hard to establish as a credible and reliable community news source — would be written off as a bunch of crackpots. After all, we’re not even...

Part of the regime’s survival strategy is to keep out foreign journalists. Agency reporters have been expelled, bloggers detained. Snippets of information leak out through furtive phone calls, Facebook and Twitter, revealing a partial picture of a regime trying to repress dissent with increasing desperation. Last week, however, I spent five days in Damascus and the south of the country where the protests began, talking to political activists, students and ordinary families. Some were too scared to discuss politics; others could not stop. On the surface, everything was normal. The sun shone, tourists trod the ancient streets of Damascus and...

Human Rights Watch released a report Wednesday detailing the abuse of journalists in the West Bank and Gaza at the hands of the Palestinian Authority. The report, “No News is Good News: Abuses Against Journalists by Palestinian Security Forces,” accuses Palestinian Authority security forces of censoring, harassing and torturing reporters, resulting in a severe restriction of free speech. Documenting seven instances of journalist detention and abuse, Human Rights Watch concludes that the effect has not only been active censorship but also a “chilling effect” of self-censorship by journalists in the area. “Security forces of the Palestinian Authority have arbitrarily detained...

Germany had facilitated the clearance of India’s outstanding oil bill with Iran in February this year in return for the release of two German journalists held in custody by Tehran, a German news magazine has reported. The online edition of Der Spiegel today reported that India’s payment of about $ 1.5 billion to Iran through a bank in Germany, the European-Iranian Trading Bank (EITB), was “facilitated” by the German government as part of a deal to get its journalists released. Germany’s central bank, Bundesbank, cleared the transaction, the magazine quoted sources as saying. India was wary of making a direct...

The triple threat in Japan - earthquake, tsunami, nuclear reactors in peril - is clearly demonstrating how reporters and anchors are bungling the basics and how the producers and executives in charge of them have fallen woefully short of leadership. How is it possible that on Monday evening (Tuesday in Japan), with the earthquake, tsunami and worries about radiation poisoning engulfing Japan, a CNN reporter can ask this question: "How scary has this been for you?"

...Vivian Schiller resigned as chief executive officer of National Public Radio. “I’m told by sources that she was forced out,” NPR’s media correspondent, David Folkenflik, has reported. Her sudden departure marks an abrupt end to a long-winding climb up the corporate ladder. In 1983, Schiller graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in Russian and Soviet Studies. Two years later, she earned a master’s degree in Russian at Middlebury College. Her first journalism gig was translating Russian in the former Soviet Union for Turner Broadcasting. For ten years, she served as Turner’s vice president of development, producing many award-winning...

News Crew Attacked At Natomas Murder Scene SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Grieving family and friends attacked a reporter and photojournalist from a Sacramento news station Sunday as they covered the aftermath of a deadly shooting in north Natomas. KTXL reporter John Lobertini and photojournalist Rebecca Little were attacked at an IHOP restaurant on the 2900 block of Advantage Way by a number of bystanders who had gathered at the site of the murder. Video captured by CBS13 news crew a short distance away shows several people shouting profanities at the news crew at about 4:00 p.m. as a growing crowd began...

TEHRAN, Iran—Iran freed two German journalists arrested four months ago in connection with a highly publicized stoning case, and Germany's foreign minister went to Tehran on Saturday to bring the reporters home in a rare top-level visit by a Western government representative. An Iranian court threw out the journalists' 20-month prison sentence Saturday, commuting it to a fine of $50,000 each and clearing the way for their release, state media reported.

The attacks on journalists covering the protests in Egypt have escalated, with reports Fox News correspondent Greg Palkot and his photographer Olaf Wiig have been severely beaten in an attack in Cairo. Fox News anchor John Roberts described the attack today, saying Palkot and Wiig were left with “fairly grave” injuries but have now been released from the hospital. Palkot, who’s been in the center of the protests in Cairo for days, became cornered by pro-government forces, according to Roberts: They were forced to leave their position when a Molotov cocktail was thrown at it, a large fire erupted. They...

The Egyptian military arrested and later released six journalists from the Arabic television network Al-Jazeera, the network said today. "Special military units have just raided the hotel where our journalists from Al-Jazeera English were operating," Clayton Swisher, an Al-Jazeera reporter in Doha, Qatar, told ABC News. Swisher said the journalists were arrested and that newsgathering equipment was also confiscated. Though the journalists were released about 90 minutes later, the equipment was not returned. The six were told authorities did not "want to see [them] again" when they were released. Swisher told ABC News the network will continue to broadcast from...

Well, that was a week we could have all done without. As President Obama declared in his legitimately moving speech to what seemed to be the homecoming rally of the Arizona Wildcats, now is a time to re-embrace civility. To that end, now might be a good time to examine the media’s role in this mess. There’s no disputing — nor any surprise — that left-wing activists didn’t need to wait for accurate reporting to jump to conclusions about the “real” culprits in the Tucson massacre. For instance, within minutes of the news hitting the wires, commentator Markos Moulitsas wrote...

Society of Professional Journalists board of directors votes to retire Helen Thomas awardBy The Associated Press (CP) – 23 hours ago INDIANAPOLIS — The board of directors of the Society of Professional Journalists has voted to retire a lifetime achievement award named for longtime journalist Helen Thomas, who has made a series of controversial statements about Jews over the past year. The board of the national journalism group made the decision on Friday. The Detroit News says the SPJ's move follows one by Wayne State University to shelve the Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity in the Media Award over similar...

On November 5, 2009, Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire at a troop readiness center in Ft. Hood, Texas, killing 13 people. Within hours of the killings, the world knew that Hasan reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before he began shooting, visited websites associated with Islamist violence, wrote Internet postings justifying Muslim suicide bombings, considered U.S. forces his enemy, opposed American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars on Islam, and told a neighbor shortly before the shootings that he was going "to do good work for God." There was ample evidence, in other words, that the Ft. Hood attack was an...

Society Of Professional Journalists Claim 'Illegal Immigrant' Is An 'Offensive' Term Wednesday, December 29, 2010 By Eric Scheiner The Diversity Committee of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) have announced an educational campaign against the term “illegal immigrant” seeking to inform reporters that the term “illegal immigrant” is “offensive” to Latinos. In the latest issue of SPJ’s magazine ‘Quill’, SPJ’s Diversity Committee member Leo Laurence writes about the campaign referencing the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ recommendation to use “undocumented immigrant” or “undocumented worker” and to “Avoid using ‘illegal(s)’ as a noun.” In the article Laurence also makes a constitutional...

With its ruthless dictator, network of forced labour camps and iron grip of its ruling party, North Korea is the last country one might expect to see a middle-aged woman berating a policeman for demanding a bribe. But extraordinary video images smuggled out of North Korea, combined with reports of graffiti and posters critical of the regime, indicate a growing willingness among a previously cowed public to speak out and demand change. Such dissent would once have been unthinkable in the reclusive state, but now hunger and plummeting living standards are now triggering demands for freedom - something that no...

2010 Was the Year Environmental Stories Seized the Media SpotlightAn astonishing number of breaking stories so far in 2010 were about the environment. TV viewers and newspaper readers were bombarded by dramatic pictures and accounts of the environment run amok, from the coal ash spill in West Virginia; the plume of volcanic ash over Europe; mine disasters in West Virginia, Chile and China; floods in Pakistan; the natural gas explosion in northern California; and, of course, the oil refinery explosions in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. “There were a series of events that focused us on the costs of...

TEHRAN, Iran — The son and lawyer for a woman who could face death by stoning, along with two German journalists, were arrested in Iran as an interview was about to begin, the International Committee Against Stoning said Monday. "The security forces raided the lawyer’s office where an interview was taking place and arrested all four," the committee said in a press release. "Their whereabouts are currently unknown and no news has been received of their situation since their arrests."

America is sick.  We The People are not sick, but the body politic is, and our nation suffers from a Carteresque malaise. We suffer from a few cancerous growths, and termites and rodents have eaten away much of our constitutional foundation.  A bipartisan gang of chiselers has turned our federal government into a criminal enterprise that hands out taxpayer money in exchange for votes, but we're wise to their depredations and we're fixin' to clean house.  Literally. In Obama's America, Journalists hide from Muslim extremists The story of journalist Molly Norris, now in hiding from Muslim murderers, saddens me.  It...

The Vatican Reporters Tornielli and Rodari analyze the attacks on this Pontificate: it is typical that the attacks against the Pope occur after important Vatican decisions. Rome (kath.net/KAP) Pope Benedict XVI is, according to the view of Andrea Tornielli and Paolo Rodari, beset by attacks from the International Media. There were "negative attacks" against everything that the Pope did or said; his visits and his initiatives were pushed to the the limit, write the Vaticanists in their book "Attack on Ratzinger" (Attacco a Ratzinger)which appeared last Wednesday in Italy. A conspiracy or a united regime is not behind this, warn...

James J. Kilpatrick, 89, a fiery advocate of racial segregation as a Richmond newspaper editor in the 1950s who became a sparring partner of liberals on the television show "60 Minutes" and a syndicated columnist who offered conservative views on subjects ranging from politics to proper use of the English language, died Sunday in Washington. Mr. Kilpatrick, who gradually distanced himself from his writings on race, became one of the most popular and eminent conservative writers of his generation. His prose style blended the erudite and the homespun, and he became one of the few conservatives syndicated in print nationally...

James J. Kilpatrick, who rose from cub reporter to become one of the South's most prominent newspaper editors and the nation's most widely syndicated political columnist, has died. He was 89. Kilpatrick's wife, Marianne Means, says he died Sunday night at George Washington University Hospital. Means says he was being treated for congestive heart failure.

The case of Mr. David Weigel, a reporter who was hired by The Washington Post to blog about conservatives and who resigned from his job on June 25, exposed the inner workings of journalism in America. But what has been most telling about the case since then hasn't just been Weigel's actions or the revelations of other journalists on "Journolist," -- which is described by The Post as "an off-the-record listserv for several hundred independent to left-leaning commentators and journalists that was founded in 2007" -- but how other journalists have reacted to the news.

The free press has all but disappeared. The news is often little more than a means of controlling the message. Entire areas of the country have experienced an information blackout. Many frightened citizens rely on bloggers, face book, twitter and text messages as their only source of news and information. Open warfare rages below the Rio Grande. The Houston Chronicle reports that. "After years of relative calm, the gangland nightmare is back-and yet, barely a single mention of the clashes here has been made by local radio and television or newspapers. The city's journalists, having lost some of their own...

We have finally reached the number one, most left-biased journalist in America today on our top ten count down and our most biased journo pick probably won’t surprise any of you. Even though she just “retired” due to her outrageous bias and hatred for Israel, we just have to give the number one most biased slot to the ever-vitriolic Ms. Helen Thomas, long time employee of United Press International (UPI) and later an independent Washington journalist. Thomas was an over 50-year employee of UPI but in the year 2000 she quit the wire service because it was bought by News...

If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would. But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn’t what you’d do at all. In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed...

The following is an interview of Lee Jay Walker, conducted by Liz Milanovich. As a journalist who takes the time to sort fact from fiction when reporting about past and present events in former Yugoslavia, Lee Jay Walker is a one of the rare media personalities who actually does an extensive research before he makes his conclusions. As a reporter for the Modern Tokyo Times and the Soul Times, Lee Jay Walker experienced the pressure by the “Embassy of Kosovo in London” to print favorable things about the terrorist Albanian organization called the Kosovo Liberation Army or the KLA. Lee...

Why Newspapers Are Dying: The Ann Coulter Edition  (Read WP posts from John Hawkins) | (Read MT posts from John Hawkins) | rss Townhall is the big league of conservative punditry. All of the A-List conservative columnists, with the exception of perhaps Mark Steyn, Karl Rove, & Peggy Noonan write for them. Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Michelle Malkin, Charles Krauthammer, Mike Adams, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, Victor Davis Hanson, -- they're all at Townhall, along with a lot of other top notch pundits. So last night, I took a look at the 5 most popular columns for the last...

Release of the Federal Trade Commission's working paper on "reinventing journalism" makes it clear that there is no more time for diplomacy about this issue: President Obama is determined to federalize the news industry just as he has banking, autos, and health care. Everybody who wants independent journalism had better wake up to these three facts about what is going: * Journalists must understand that there is no way the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press will survive if the federal government regulates the news industry as envisioned by the FTC. Those who accept at face value protests...

A Michigan lawmaker wants to license reporters to ensure they’re credible and vet them for “good moral character.” Senator Bruce Patterson is introducing legislation that will regulate reporters much like the state does with hairdressers, auto mechanics and plumbers. Patterson, who also practices constitutional law, says that the general public is being overwhelmed by an increasing number of media outlets--traditional, online and citizen generated--and an even greater amount misinformation. “Legitimate media sources are critically important to our government,” he said. He told FoxNews.com that some reporters covering state politics don’t know what they’re talking about and they’re working for publications...

Here is a video report that details a pattern of attacks against journalists in Russia. Reporters who dare to criticize the government are harrassed, picked up for interrogation, and in some cases, beaten badly. One journalist featured in the report had his fingers smashed so badly by thugs that three of his fingers had to be amputated. There appears to be little respect for the rule of law in Russia, with both Medvedev and Putin admitting that is the case. The law is used by those in power to keep their power.

The International Federation of Journalists has expelled the Israeli branch after refusing to allow it to pay the same reduced amount of dues levied on neighboring countries, such as Jordan. Chaim Shibi, an Israeli branch official and veteran Israeli journalist, charged that the action by the international body is the culmination of a long-standing anti-Israeli bias.

Did we just hear Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal try to blame local journalist for his ‘misspoken’ words about his Vietnam war record? When Blumenthal was asked at Tuesday’s press conference why he didn’t correct published accounts of his Vietnam service, he said:There were a few articles, not many. I am responsible for my own statements….I can’t be responsible for all the articles, I may not even have seen them. ….sometimes journalists do make mistakes.Really? Sure, journalists get quotes and background wrong from time to time but civil servants, who are in the public eye like Blumenthal,

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MEXICO CITY — Attackers fired more than 100 bullets and threw at least three grenades at a television station in Mexico's western state of Nayarit before dawn Monday, causing damage but no injuries, a company spokesman said. Enrique Berumen, a spokesman for Mexican broadcasting giant Televisa, said the raid on its XHKG channel in Nayarit was the eighth attack on one of the company's facilities in recent years. Investigators found 102 spent cartridges from high-powered rifles as well as pieces of an exploded grenade and two grenades that didn't go off. In January 2009, a Televisa station in the northern...

The merged Honolulu Star-Advertiser debuts June 7, with nearly 400 people losing their jobs in the process, according to the publisher of the combined newspaper. The last day that both The Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin will publish separately will be Sunday, June 6... The Star-Bulletin purchased The Advertiser from the Gannett Co. and Francis said he expects to hire about half of the Advertiser's 580 employees, meaning about 290 Advertiser workers will lose their jobs in the merger. The Advertiser, one of Gannett’s larger newspapers with a daily circulation of about 130,000, was founded in 1856 and purchased...

The Pentagon has barred four reporters from further reporting of the military commission proceedings at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay because they published articles identifying a witness whose identity had been protected by the presiding judge even though it has been in the public domain since 2005. The American Civil Liberties Union has condemned the move as "absurd ... rash, draconian and unconstitutional." The announcement came at the conclusion of two weeks of pre-trial proceedings in the case of Omar Khadr, a Canadian detainee who has been held at the base since he was a teenager. The four journalists...

Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, who, preliminary reports indicate, is not a member of the Tea Party, has been arrested in connection with the Times Square bombing. Officials think that either Shahzad did the deed, or knows who did. And this was a bombing: that the lethal contraption malfunctioned matters not a whit. Shahzad, or somebody probably known to him, attempted to terrorize, commit mayhem, and to kill. He accomplished the first two goals, but luckily not the third. Before Shahzad was, Hollywood-style, ripped off a plane as he was making his escape; before, that is, the cops knew who to...

Police and rescuers failed to find two journalists stranded for a third day among feuding militants in a remote village after their caravan of Mexican and European rights activists was caught in a deadly ambush. Authorities struggled to locate the missing journalists Thursday near the remote Triqui Indian town of San Juan Copala, where a violent dispute between rival political factions has reportedly cut off basic supplies and services to residents. The convoy members killed were Finnish human rights activist Jyri Jaakkola, who reportedly came to document deteriorating conditions in the village, and Mexican political activist Beatriz Carino Trujillo. But...

The Garden State has a shield law for journalists, meaning the government cannot force reporters or opinion writers to reveal their sources. There is nothing more vigorously defended among journalists than the right to keep secret one’s anonymous sources in service of “the public’s right to know.” The decades-long secret identity of “Deep Throat” in The Washington Post’s Watergate exposés is the standard of that journalistic principle. But a New Jersey state appellate court last weekruled that a woman named Shellee Hale is not a “real” journalist, but just a blogger, so is not protected by the state’s shield law.

At the Media Violence Project, our charter is to protect public safety by researching, documenting and raising awareness about the ever-increasing wave of violent, disgusting crimes perpetrated by members of the American news media.