Category: Media Beat column

The scheduled speech by Sen. Hillary Clinton at the “Take Back America 2006” conference in Washington on June 13 is likely to intensify discussion about her relationship with the progressive grassroots of the Democratic Party. Many weeks ago the conference sponsor, the Campaign for America’s Future, sent out an email telling prospective attendees: “As in…

I’ve been thinking about Tariq Aziz a lot since the New York Times printed a front-page story on the former Iraqi deputy prime minister in late May. A color photograph showed him decked out in what the article described as “an open-necked hospital gown, with a patient’s plastic identification tag on his wrist.” He looked…

People who are concerned about the state of the U.S. news media in 2006 might pause on Memorial Day to consider those who have lost their lives in the midst of journalistic neglect, avoidance and bias. We remember that while TV and radio news reports tell the latest about corporate fortunes, vast numbers of real…

We see this kind of news story now and again. Sometimes we try to imagine the people behind the numbers, the human realities underneath the surface abstractions. But overall, the responses testify to journalism’s failings — and our own. “Poor nutrition contributes to the deaths of some 5.6 million children every year,” an Associated Press…

One of the nation’s leading pollsters, Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center, wrote a few weeks ago that among Americans "there is little potential support for the use of force against Iran." This month the White House has continued to emphasize that it is committed to seeking a diplomatic solution. Yet the U.S. government…