It was all over the news when Federal Judge Henry E. Hudson of Richmond, Va., ruled unconstitutional a key part of the recently-enacted federal health care law. The mainstream press was a lot less diligent in reporting Judge Hudson’s connection to an outfit, Campaign Solutions, whose favored candidates worked to defeat the law. The multiple [...]

A world-wide thriller is taking place right now. We are all in the middle of it. These are the elements, more or less: Julian Assange began Wikileaks a few years ago and released important, secret documents, getting some attention but not a great deal, and attracting some followers. One of them was a young American [...]

How excellent it is that Media Matters for America devotes so much space to ridiculing Fox News. No group is more deserving. The individual stories are juicy, the news endless. Putting it all in one place is a public service. It won’t stop Murdoch and Ailes as they go about dumbing down America, but – [...]

This column first appeared in Nieman Reports. When I arrived at Lippmann House in early August 2000 to begin my tenure as curator, I had only an inkling of the sweeping changes that would wash over journalism and mainstream news organizations during the coming decade. My predecessor, Bill Kovach, in announcing his retirement, had a [...]

DES MOINES–The convoluted policy of the Des Moines Register that allows readers to post often scurrilous or racist comments on line — under the cover of anonymity — took still another odd turn on Sunday. Columnist Rekha Basu wrote that, henceforth, people who want to comment on her writing will have to do so by [...]

Two letters in the Washington Post Nov. 27th told editors something they should know without reminding: Just because somebody says something stupid or crude that is picked up here and there doesn’t mean it has to go in the paper. The letters were referring to what ran as the “Quote of the Week” in a [...]

In an email to Meet the Press on Oct. 26 and in a snail-mail letter the next day, I wrote: “For an article I am doing for niemanwatchdog.org, I want to ask: “Why has Newt Gingrich been the most-booked guest on Meet the Press during the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency? “Why has Speaker [...]

DES MOINES—Granted, it was a one-word slip, an adjective out of place. But still its usage rankled — given how the religious right dominates politics in Iowa. So, within seconds of the close of the WHO-TV 6 P.M., news cast, I emailed the anchor and the news director: “Why on earth in its profiles tonight [...]

This column first appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of Nieman Reports. The e-mail message from Hollman Morris was unexpected. It was “urgent,” he said. “Please call im- mediately on Skype.” I reached him and his brother, Juan Pablo, in Bogota. His image on the computer screen revealed a stricken man at pains to say [...]

Cleaning up in the wake of the 2010 Iowa State Fair will be daunting this year. In addition to the mess left by nearly 1 million visitors and thousands of farm animals, we have a continuing saga of news coverage that told of possible racial assaults and then, in Saturday Night Live fashion, appears to [...]