It was no surprise that Illinois Supreme Court chief justice Robert Thomas won a $7 million jury verdict in a libel suit against a small Illinois daily, the Kane County Chronicle. Most libel actions are tossed out of court without going to trial, but once jurors get their hands on a case they usually favor [...]

One large problem with self-appointed commentators is that often they don’t know what they’re talking about, and their interviewers are equally dumb on the subject. For the right-wingers on Fox News, that may be deliberate. But in this case, I don’t think so, because I’ve heard others make the same mistake. During a Nov. 21 [...]

Some 2006 election questions and thoughts for reporters: What about voting machines? There wasn’t any way to hold a real recount in the Virginia Senate election, where the Democrat won by three-tenths of a percentage point; there could only have been a check on whether election officials correctly added up the numbers the machines gave [...]

Dean Baquet’s departure from the Los Angeles Times is sad and worrisome — and all the more so because we’re likely to misdirect the passion it stirs in us. We’ll conclude, quite logically, that the Tribune Co., the paper’s corporate owner, is the villain in Baquet’s story, as it was in the John Carroll story [...]

New York Times editorial writers figuratively cracked open George W. Bush’s skull, peered into it and in the lead Sunday editorial Oct. 22, “Blowing in the Wind,” revealed why Bush had a “sudden change of heart” and “very publicly consult(ed) with his generals to consider a change in tactics in Iraq.” He is “worried,” the [...]

I propose that journalists who are pressed to use shorthand words to save space, and thus avoid complicated ideas, should be very suspicious of venerating as political virtues such simplistic expressions as “bipartisan,” “moderate” and “centrist.” These are said to be positive political attributes, the opposite of the more negative terms “partisan,” “extreme,” or “ideological.” [...]

When is the last time you heard someone in the well-heeled White House press corps ask the president or one of his flacks a question on behalf of older Americans? If you can’t remember, neither can I. And on behalf of older people I’ve been paying attention. But they should be asking penetrating questions on [...]

The predictable reaction to a story reporting that New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse had expressed personal opinions in a speech at Harvard last June raises intriguing thoughts about the meaning of journalistic objectivity. Her comments raised questions over the paper’s ethical guidelines, which discourage news staffers from “expressing views beyond what they [...]