WORLD'S WORST LEAD

From ESPN on-line:

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. -- The ball just sat there, completely unaware of the heartbreak it had just caused, completely oblivious to everything that it meant.

7:10:53 PM    

RIGHT-WING SHOUTING

Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly has cogent comments on attacks on the media for leaning too far to the left. Drum likens the frothing over what's been labelled Rathergate, as being "about keeping alive the persecution myth so central to American conservatism: that the liberal media is a corrupt and malign institution intent on crushing conservative dissent at every opportunity."

This game has been ongoing for a long time, of course, but conservative bullying and intimidation of the media has real-world consequences quite aside from personnel shuffling at the New York Times or the BBC. Just as Rathergate has helped bury bad news from Iraq this week, persistent complaining from conservatives has kept the overall coverage from Iraq relatively benign for over a year, despite a nearly unanimous belief among reporters on the ground that events there are even worse than they look. Within the past few weeks some of those reporters have finally begun saying that on front pages and the evening news, but it's a year late and several billion dollars short.

He's writing about American media and the American right, but it seems familiar on this side of the border, too. Shout loud enough and long enough about the "liberal bias" of the press, and not only don't you have to deal with the issues that are being reported and discussed, but you begin to make media leaders too nervous to let reporters do their jobs "without fear or favour."

7:00:29 PM    

FREEING INFORMATION

Here's a thought, triggered by a report at OnlineJournalism.com that a county in Illinois is about to go paperless and put all it's publicly-available information on the web.

"We want as much material as is legally and technically possible to be available to our citizens on the Internet," said Jim Healy, chairman of the County Board's Technology Committee.

Here's the thought: This should be mandated for all governments. All public information should not only be public in name, but readily available and easily accessible. Make it mandatory that all government information be provided (subject to the usual rules about in camera meetings, matters of personnel and property, Cabinet secrecy, etc).

In fact, let's take it a step further. Instead of having Freedom of Information officers who rule on requests from the public for public information, reverse the onus. If a government wants to keep something out of the public eye, make it apply to an independent FOI office to have the information excluded.

Just a thought. After all, it is our information, isn't it?

6:11:55 PM    

EDITING TERROR

According to the CBC, Reuters is going after Canwest/Global for the media chain's policy of repeatedly inserting the word "terrorist" into Reuters articles filed from the Middle East.

David Schlesinger of Reuters called such changes unacceptable, according to CBC.

He said CanWest had crossed a line from editing for style to editing the substance and slant of news from the Middle East.

"If they want to put their own judgment into it, they're free to do that, but then they shouldn't say that it's by a Reuters reporter," said Schlesinger.

Included in the CBC's web report is this rather damning bit of prose:

But the Ottawa Citizen, another CanWest paper, has admitted to making erroneous changes in a story about Iraq from another leading news agency.

Last week, the Citizen inserted the word "terrorist" seven times into an Associated Press story on the Iraqi city of Fallujah, where Iraqi insurgents have been battling U.S.-led occupation forces.

In an interview, Ottawa Citizen editor Scott Anderson conceded fighters in Fallujah were not terrorists but said CanWest has a policy of renaming some groups as terrorists.

He added the paper had applied that term primarily to Arab groups, and that mistakes had been made occasionally.

Terrorism and terrorist are legitimate words (although loaded ones) and there are times when they should be used. But to adopt a policy of automatically attaching them to specific groups or individuals smacks of manipulating facts and appearances to fit an agenda.

UPDATE: Nicole at A Capital Idea picked up on this item this afternoon and helpfully provided a link to an exchange over euphemisms for terroist going on in the Testy Copy Editors forum. Worth reading to get a sense of how copy editors are dealing with the use of the word.

9:25:01 AM