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Center for Citizen Media: Blog

Bordering on Accuracy about TortureJanuary 5

The New York Times has been among the prime examples of media organizations that refuse to call torture what it is: torture. The euphamism that the Times and other traditional (and cowardly) media outlets have been using has typically been “enhanced interrogation techniques” — despite the fact that at least one of those techniques, waterboarding, has been the basis of our own government’s war-crimes cases against others in the past.

Today the Times moves the ball slightly toward the correct goal line. In an online posting about the naming of several key Justice Department officials, reporter Eric Lichtblau writes of “practices bordering on torture.”

This borders on accuracy, and is an improvement. One of these days, the newspaper may actually use the correct word without equivocation.

“Censorship” Author RespondsJanuary 3

Howard Rosenberg replied to my posting that criticized his (and a co-author’s) misguided views on government versus corporate censorship (I don’t believe the latter exists). I’ve posted his email in the body of that post, which you can find here.

LA Times Lists ‘Foreclosures’ in Top Web Classifieds CategoriesDecember 31 2008

From the top of the current LA Times homepage:

Could we be reaching a bottom soon in the real estate market?

Authors: Government Censorship Better than CorporateDecember 31 2008

UPDATED (with response from one of the authors)

LA Observed has a post about how KRON TV in San Francisco disinvited the authors of a new book from a talk-show appearance after discovering that the book, No Time to Think: The Menace of Media Speed and the 24-hour News Cycle, takes shots at the crappy state of local TV news. My initial reaction was incredulity. I mean, how clueless is that kind of move?

Then I read the entire item, which includes an outraged email from the authors — Howard Rosenberg, formerly of the LA Times, and Charles Feldman — in which they write, among other things, the following line:

Government censorship is not nearly as bad as is corporate censorship–especially by a company that serves the public—or ought to.

I find myself hoping that the email by the authors is a fake. If it’s real, the authors need a refresher course in First Amendment 101, not to mention reality. The most likely explanation for the authors’ ridiculous statement is that a) they were pissed; b) they wrote their outraged note in haste; and c) they didn’t proofread it before they sent it along.

Why ridiculous? Journalists should understand that only governments can censor. Other entities can make it difficult to get heard by large numbers of people, but that is absolutely not

A New Milestone: Consumers Union Buys Consumerist BlogDecember 31 2008

NY Times: Consumers Union to Buy a Blog From Gawker. It will become part of a new division of Consumers Union, and the current editors will remain. No plans are under way to change the coverage or to begin charging for the site. “We don’t want to acquire the Consumerist and then squelch it in some way,” said Kevin McKean, vice president and editorial director of Consumers Union.

This is a smart move by Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, the online arm of which is one of Web publishing’s earliest and most important success stories. It broadens the brand, and it helps bring an organization that needed some updating into the 21st Century in other ways.

Gawker Media decided to get rid of Consumerist, part of a restructuring that the company’s founder and chief, Nick Denton, said was necessary to focus on what will be profitable in the face of what he predicted will be an advertising meltdown. There was an obvious fit with Consumers Union, an organization that has made its mistakes over the years but has stood up to enormous pressure from corporations that hated the organization’s independent ways.

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