Thursday, October 14, 2004

Fall Break Catch-Up I'm reading these: Bill Moyers' speech at the SPJ National Convention, "It took me awhile after I left government to get my footing back in journalism. I had to learn all over again that what's important for the journalist is not how close you are to power but how close you are to reality... I believe democracy requires 'a sacred contract' between journalists and those who put their trust in us to tell them what we can about how the world really works." The Promise of the First Amendment -- The New York Times calls for a journalist shield law in response to threats to jail its reporters or subpoena their telephone records. (The Web version of this op-ed just gives the names of the authors, not their titles: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. is chairman and publisher and Russell T. Lewis is chief executive of The New York Times.) Here's an excerpt: "Perhaps it is a function of the age we live in or perhaps it is something more insidious, but the incidence of reporters being threatened with jail by the federal government is on the rise. "To reverse this trend, to give meaning to the guarantees of the First Amendment and to thereby strengthen our democracy, it is now time for Congress to follow the lead of the states and enact a federal shield law for journalists." Corrections: Eccentric, Essential and Ready for an Upgrade: The Times public editor's critique of his paper's "corrections" policy, which shuffles major errors into a deck of typos. A review of a book about college football fan culture that might give my Yankee friends some hint of what it's like to live in the shadow of the 100,000-seat UT football stadium. Finally, last month's Annenberg Center for Digital Technology report on the Web's first decade. 11:46:20 AM

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