Columbia Journalism Review back issues from March 1997:
Lining up to cover Cuba: CNN is first - and not everyone is pleased.
Mar 01, 1997; ... In a world where Americans learn intimate details about religious upheavals in Afghanistan and follow the smallest gyrations in Japanese stock markets, Cuba, ninety miles off Florida, remains a relative mystery. Is Castro's economy improving or declining? What kind of ...
Stopping the circus: "dignified" coverage of the Oklahoma City case.
Mar 01, 1997; ... Reporters and photographers chasing attorneys, pounding on witnesses' car windows, and fighting for position are just some of the negative images of the media that linger long after O.J. Simpson was acquitted in his criminal trial. Another high-profile event, the Oklahoma City ...
E-Mail: how they use it.(journalists and electronic mail)
Mar 01, 1997; ... Two years ago, when Scott Rosenberg tried to put his e-mail address at the bottom of his San Francisco Examiner column, the paper's mainframe computer read the unfamiliar "@" sign as a control code and deleted it. That won't happen anymore. These days, more and more print journalists, ...
Beat the press: how the extreme right runs rings around the media.(in France)
Mar 01, 1997; ... Alain Sanders was a mercenary in the Belgian Congo long before he became a journalist at the Parisian daily Present, and he still sees himself as a lonely warrior. The red-haired, bearded reporter hero of France's extreme right party, the National Front, explained to me why he despises ...
Touch of the poet.(Boston Globe Reporter Patricia Smith)
Mar 01, 1997; ... Patricia Smith, whom the The Boston Globe lured from her job as a feature writer at the Chicago Sun-Times six years ago, "was the type of person easily overlooked," says Lincoln Millstein, a Boston Globe vice president. Not so in Boston, where the marquee columnist has become a force to ...
To err is human, to admit it divine.(media's failure to admit errors)
Mar 01, 1997; ... To preempt a potentially embarrassing libel trial, NBC News paid more than half a million dollars to Richard A. Jewell, the falsely accused suspect in the Atlanta Summer Olympics bombing. But NBC never did issue a retraction or apology, or acknowledge that it went too far when Tom Brokaw ...
Punishing the press: the public passes some tough judgements on libel, fairness, and "fraud."(includes sidebar article on consequences of news gathering and reporting following NBC's settlement with Summer Olympic bombing suspect, Richard Jewell)
Mar 01, 1997; ... The 1990s have been a humbling time for journalism, particularly investigative television journalism. An NBC News magazine program had to apologize for fakery in its investigation of General Motors trucks; ABC and CBS both backed down under pressure from tobacco corporations, with ABC ...
Damning undercover tactics as "fraud": can reporters lie about who they are? The Food Lion jury says no.(includes sidebar article on an investment banker's libel suit against ABC)
Mar 01, 1997; ... U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Tilley Jr. spoke softly, as did the attorneys, so the assembled television, radio, and print reporters had to strain to hear every word in the low-ceilinged, carpeted, sound-muffled courtroom in Greensboro, North Carolina. As hard as it was to hear, it ...
Ruling a prizewinner unfair: the state's news council censures a broadcast as "untruthful" and "distorted." (Minnesota)(complaints against an award-winning investigative journalist's report on unsafe airline practices)
Mar 01, 1997; ... Every profession has its touchstones. For journalists, the touchstones are honesty, accuracy, fairness, and truth. For airlines, the touchstone is safety. So when television journalists allege that an airline is deliberately jeopardizing the safety of its passengers, well, those are ...
News councils: the case for ... and against.((excerpt))(Interview)
Mar 01, 1997; ... At the end of a 60 Minutes segment last December 8 on the WCCO case, Mike Wallace declared, "I believe there should be a national news council, though many of my colleagues disagree with me." Largely because of Wallace's championing, the news council idea is being seriously explored by, ...
The new New Republic: meet Michael Kelly, some kind of liberal.(editor of 'The New Republic')
Mar 01, 1997; ... Michael Kelly became editor of The New Republic on November 11 and his first issue of the magazine, dated December 2, featured a drawing of President Clinton looking partied out, nose glowing like Rudolph's, under a headline -- "The Hangover" -- meant to suggest postelection malaise. In ...
The real dangers of conglomerate control: a Columbia Journalism Review forum looks at the bad news about corporate synergy.(Panel Discussion)
Mar 01, 1997; ... In media circles, the 1996 Word of the Year was "synergy." Again. Ever since the summer of 1995, when Disney's chief, Michael Eisner, embraced the term during his company's purchase of Capital Cities/ABC for some $19 billion -- "The synergies are under every rock we turn over," he bubbled ...
Trimming the fringe: how newspapers shun low-income readers.
Mar 01, 1997; ... If you wonder which truth much of the press currently honors, consider the reaction of Joel R. Kramer, publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, in 1995, when his paper posted a 4 percent circulation loss over three years after raising home-delivery prices 32 percent. "We are a healthier ...
Right in the Old Gazoo: A Lifetime of Scrapping with the Press.
Mar 01, 1997; ... On the plus side, the book is often on target as it skewers the press corps for a prevalent meanness of spirit, a reluctance to acknowledge mistakes, a penchant for laziness, hypocrisy, and cynicism. This critique is hardly original, but Simpson puts it across with a folksy, frequently ...
Citizen K.: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin.
Mar 01, 1997; ... Whether Kimberlin did what he said he did (sold pot to Dan Quayle) and didn't do what he insisted he didn't do (planted bombs) was of course central to the notion that he was a political prisoner, and Singer's 1992 piece was crafted to suggest strongly that Kimberlin was being honest ...
Airframe.
Mar 01, 1997; ... Better than most reporters, Michael Crichton knows how to do a clip job. He has made millions by cooking current affairs into best-selling potboilers like Rising Sun, Disclosure, and his latest, Airframe. For such a good rewrite man, though, it is surprising how little ...