61 GROUPS CHARGE OBAMA REGIME THREATENS PRESS FREEDOM

A group of press, civil liberties, union, and Internet organizations have called on Attorney General Eric Holder to produce a full report on the Department of Justice’s investigation of journalists and government whistleblowers. “Your actions have threatened press freedom _ and endangered the health of our democracy. As groups working to strengthen democratic institutions and […]

AP CHIEF CALLS PHONE RECORDS SEIZURE “UNCONSTITUTIONAL”

In perhaps the strongest condemnation ever delivered by the Association Press against an action by a U.S. administration, the AP’s president and CEO on Sunday called the seizure of AP phone records last year “unconstitutional” and maintained that the action has already had chilling consequences for press freedom. Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, the […]

FEDS ADMIT GRABBING AP PHONE RECORDS

The Associated Press on Monday charged that the Justice Department engaged in a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into its news gathering activities by obtaining the outgoing telephone records of its reporters and editors in New York, Washington and Hartford, CT in April and May of 2012. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, AP […]

ASSOCIATED PRESS DIGITIZING ITS VIDEO ARCHIVES

Hoping to attract more customers for news footage stored in its vaults, the Associated Press said that it has begun transferring to digital media some 70,000 hours of 16mm film and videotape. The film archives comprise 3,000 hours of news clips shot between 1963 and 1980. Because of its relatively high cost — both raw […]

SHOULD NAVY SEAL WHO SHOT BIN LADEN HAVE BEEN NAMED?

Fox News has defended its decision to reveal the name of the Navy Seal who participated in the hunting down and killing of Osama bin Laden and who has written a book about that mission that challenges some of the official reports about it. Likewise, CBS has defended its decision not to reveal the name […]

WHEN CABLE NEWS FAILED ON YEAR’S BIGGEST STORY

CNN might have been boasting today (Friday) that it was the first to announce the Supreme Court’s decsion on Obamacare Thursday morning. It was the first, beating Fox News by eight seconds, but it also got the story spectacularly wrong. So did Fox News, which also was vying for the right to claim that it […]

AP GOES HD

In what it called “a major milestone,” the Associated Press announced Tuesday that it has completed its conversion to high-definition. AP said that it began upgrading its technical facilities to HDTV 18 months ago and in November 2011 began offering broadcast and cable stations entertainment news in HD. In January of this year, it started […]

ROGER AILES — AP ISN’T “NEUTRAL”

Apparently Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes believes that the Associated Press is yet another mainstream news outlet that is neither fair nor balanced. In an interview with WOUB, a public radio station in Athens, OH, and reported by TVNewser.com, Ailes said that he began his career working at Ohio University’s radio station. “They used to […]

MEDIA “DEATH WATCH” FOR MANDELA AROUSES ANGER IN S. AFRICA

Plans by the media to cover the eventual death of Nelson Mandela have touched off a competitive clash among news organizations in South Africa and a cultural clash between the media and the country’s general population. Mandela, who is 93, has not appeared in public in nearly 18 months, and some media organizations have already […]

HURRICANE HYPE?

Monday-morning quarterbacks were accusing the broadcast networks and the cable news channels (and The Weather Channel) of overplaying the dangers of Hurricane Irene in order to boost ratings and ad sales. In an interview with the Associated Press, Lise King, a fellow at Harvard University, complained that the coverage became more of an entertainment than […]

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