Nieman Watchdog

A how-not-to guide | News flash! Journalists prepared to once again utterly misread annual Social Security Trustees report
ASK THIS| August 04, 2010
Thursday's report will once again describe an essential program in admirable fiscal health. But every year, journalists twist the facts to fit a narrative favored by the political elite: that the program is in crisis. Rather than manufacturing a false drama that shakes people's confidence about their future benefits, two Social Security experts write, reporters should stick to the facts.

Make it a beat | Important questions about Social Security
ASK THIS
The press needs to dig beyond the political rhetoric and make sure people understand what's motivating the push for private accounts, and what's at stake.

House of cards V | The falling dollar, Social Security and foreign debt
ASK THIS
The last of five questions reporters should be asking about who's lending us all this money, why, and for how long?

A more progressive system | Bush wants to privatize Social Security. Why not just lift the FICA cap?
ASK THIS
Author William Greider says eliminating the cap is an obvious, fair solution to any long-term problems Social Security may run into. Shouldn't reporters be doing the arithmetic and asking about that?

Bob Giles
Overcoming the U.S. Visa Denial of a Colombian Nieman Fellow
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 that [...]

Herb Strentz
Des Moines Fair Coverage, Part 2
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 [...]

Herb Strentz
On ‘Beat Whitey Night’ in Des Moines
(Editor’s note: The incidents described here have become part of a developing story, as this Google link shows.) The Des Moines Register’s reluctance to identify criminal suspects or victims by race has turned into an outright refusal to do so. The closing night of the Iowa State Fair was marked by an observance not exactly on the [...]

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(Nieman Watchdog)

Talking to the media outside channels
The Pentagon increases its efforts to have contacts with the press monitored and approved by DoD public affairs officials.
(Secrecy News)

Telecoms charging more to do nothing
It's getting more expensive to have an unlisted phone number. What's the logic behind that?
(Center for Media and Democracy)

Prosecute those leaks
The Obama administration has indicted another alleged leaker, this time for reportedly passing along to Fox News an intelligence assessment that North Korea was likely to respond to U.N. sanctions by conducting another nuclear test.
(Secrecy News/Federation of American Scientists)

A broad array of massive financial crimes
As PRWatch.org shows, court-imposed settlements have only skimmed the surface of big banks' wrongdoing in the financial crisis.
(Center for Media and Democracy)

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