Ten Principles for Washington Post Journalism on the Web

Well lets just take a look. ¿Autorización.

H/T Bloggasm

Ten Principles for Washington Post Journalism on the Web

1. The Washington Post is an online source of local, national and international news and information. We serve local, national and international audiences on the Web.
2. We will be prepared to publish Washington Post journalism online 24/7. Web users expect to see news as it happens. If they do not find it on our site they will go elsewhere.
3. We will publish most scoops and other exclusives when they are ready, which often will be online.
4. The originality and added value of Post journalism distinguishes us on the Web. We will emphasize enterprise, analysis, criticism and investigations in our online journalism.
5. Post journalism published online has the same value as journalism published in the newspaper. We embrace chats, blogs and multimedia presentations as contributions to our journalism.
6. Accuracy, fairness and transparency are as important online as on the printed page. Post journalism in either medium should meet those standards.
7. We recognize and support the central role of opinion, personality and reader-generated content on the Web. But reporters and editors should not express personal opinions unless they would be allowed in the newspaper, such as in criticism or columns.
8. The newsroom will respond to the rhythms of the Web as ably and responsibly as we do to the rhythms of the printed newspaper. Our deadline schedules, newsroom structures and forms of journalism will evolve to meet the possibilities of the Web.
9. Newsroom employees will receive training appropriate to their roles in producing online journalism.
10. Publishing our journalism on the Web should make us more open to change what we publish in the printed newspaper. There is no meaningful division at The Post between “old media” and “new media.”

OK, I buy numbers 1-3

Have a problem with 4.

Five is acceptable.

Six? Hahaha.

Seven? Spare me.

The rest...no problem.

The truth is, the WaPo is shitty on paper and will be the same on the "WEB".

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Trust your news sources...really

From Jil in Pattaya.

I'm not a news reporter. When it comes to putting Pattaya news on my blog, I just read what other people have taken the time to find out, and then give a quick summary here, and some comment about why I think it is noteworthy. Therefore, when something is reported incorrectly by the actual reporters, it goes unfiltered and uncorrected directly onto my blog. I don't like it when it happens, but everybody makes mistakes and before now I've let them slide.

However, recently the several news outfits who research and report the news here in Pattaya have had a stretch of really poor reporting. Yesterday, I linked to a news article about how Polo AGoGo's Russian dancers were arrested for dancing in their bikinis. The problem is that it was Galaxy AGoGo that has the Russian dancers, not Polo: One of the principal facts regarding the story was completely incorrect. How could a reporter sent to research and report on a story get something as fundamental as "where the story took place" wrong?

Ya can't trust anyone. We do, but we're stupid.

Learn from this, folks.

Chávez Shutting Down Opposition TV Station

Of course Bush need not do such a thing because there is no opposition TV.

The elimination of the major televised opposition is clearly a boon for his [Chávez's] ability to control what citizens hear and see and therefore a means by which to influence what they think.

Bush just tells the MSM what the people should think and they regurgitate it.

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Due credit

I went off half-cocked about the pet food problem and how the government didn't seem interested in investigating. I'm embarrassed. They did investigate and found the US companies to be innocent.

That isn't snark, BTW. Sometimes government agencies do the right thing.

And, taking my info from the exalted MSM (Money-grubbing Succubus Media), I reported the lethal ingredient in the pet food was rat poison which we now know is not true.

Man I should never have touched this fucking story.

Now, please make sure the contaminated wheat gluten isn't in human foods. Please!

The U.S. is blocking imports of wheat gluten from a company in China, acting after an investigation implicated the contaminated ingredient in the recent pet-food deaths of cats and dogs.

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Something the MSM probably won't tell you

Which is interesting inasmuch as it involved the Associated Press (AP).

The US military has said that a soldier was justified in erasing journalists' footage of the aftermath of a suicide bombing and shooting in which at least eight Afghans were killed.

In a letter to the Associated Press news agency a military spokesman said publication could have compromised an investigation and led to false public conclusions.

"Investigative integrity is one circumstance when civil and military authorities will reluctantly exercise the right to control what a journalist is permitted to document," Colonel Victor Petrenko, chief of staff to the US commander in eastern Afghanistan, said on Friday.

The letter was a response to a protest from the Associated Press which had employed the two freelance journalists who were forced to delete photographs and video footage of the incident in Barikaw, eastern Afghanistan on 4th March.

Thirty-four people were also wounded in the violence.

Petrenko said that photographs or video taken by "untrained people" might "capture visual details that are not as they originally were".

...

Kathleen Carroll, the Associated Press executive editor in New York, disputed the assertions.

"That is not a reasonable justification for erasing images from our cameras," she said.

"AP's journalists in Afghanistan are trained, accredited professionals working at an appropriate distance from the bombing scene. In democratic societies, legitimate journalists are allowed to work without having their equipment seized and their images deleted."

I could see a reasonable case for confiscating the photos and video as evidence to be used in the investigation of the incident. Although obtaining copies would be better.

However, destroying potentially useful evidence doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
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Stealth media

Check this out over at Big Shot Bob in Texas.

Why bloggers matter

Not to beat a dead horse, but why are many bloggers picking up on that picture and dismantling it and the MSM aren't? This is part of the evidence the military is offering as "proof" Iranian officials are the bogeymen.

Markings on the Zelzal 2 rocket are in Farsi. On a similar note, Juan Cole crunches some numbers. Result: implausible. Looks like the Zelzal 3 has markings in Farsi too. Here's an anti-ship missile with Farsi on it.

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Thousands of Army Humvees Lack Armor Upgrade

Why in hell can't the MSM do their job?

The Army is working to fill a shortfall in Iraq of thousands of advanced Humvee armor kits designed to reduce U.S. troop deaths from roadside bombs — including a rising threat from particularly lethal weapons linked to Iran and known as “explosively formed penetrators” (EFP) — that are now inflicting 70 percent of the American casualties in the country, according to U.S. military and civilian officials. [emphasis mine]

The only "link" that exists at this point is in the minds of the military leaders. Throw in the word "alleged" for Christ sake. I've posted before the weapons might very well be black market munitions.

(via True Blue Liberal)

Cronkite Warns Drive for Media Profits Poses Threat to Democracy

Pressures by media companies to generate ever-greater profits are threatening the very freedom the nation was built upon, former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite warned yesterday.

In a keynote address at Columbia University, Cronkite said today's journalists face greater challenges than those from his generation. No longer could journalists count on their employers to provide the necessary resources, he said, "to expose truths that powerful politicians and special interests often did not want exposed."

Instead, he said, "they face rounds and rounds of job cuts and cost cuts that require them to do ever more with ever less."

"In this information age and the very complicated world in which we live today, the need for high-quality reporting is greater than ever," he told journalism students and professionals at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. "It's not just the journalist's job at risk here. It's American democracy. It is freedom."

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This is your MSM

I find it hard to imagine MSNBC's seeing this as a victory. How irrelevant have they become? Just asking.

Something else the MSM won't tell you

Because things are just going so well in Iraq. However, people outside the Bush administration see things a little differently.

Arab diplomat Mokhtar Lamani has resigned, disillusioned and nearly drained of hope, after spending months in Iraq trying to coax Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders into peace.

“I am no longer going to stand and watch Iraqis’ bodies being taken to the cemetery,” he said, after arriving in Cairo from Baghdad last week to tender his resignation.

The 54-year-old Moroccan’s mission was the Arab world’s main communal effort to try to help solve the turmoil in what was once one of its most powerful members - a response to criticism from Iraq and the US that Arabs were not doing enough.

But it was a failure, and Lamani blames feeble support from Arab countries, US policies and the unwillingness of Iraq’s deeply divided leaders.

“The help that (Iraq) should get was out of my hands,” Lamani said recently during an interview at a Cairo hotel. “I have no desire to lie to myself or to Iraqis” – confessing that he had “nothing to give.”

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