Category: Media Beat column

American news outlets provided extensive — and mostly laudatory — coverage of Marla Ruzicka after she died in Baghdad on April 16. The humanitarian aid worker’s undaunted spirit and boundless dedication had endeared her to a wide array of people as she strived to gain acknowledgment and compensation for civilians harmed by the war in…

Forty years ago, on the morning of April 26, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson spoke with a top State Department official about fast-moving events in the Dominican Republic. A popular rebellion was on the verge of toppling a military junta and restoring the country’s democratically elected president, Juan Bosch, to power. “This Bosch is no good,”…

The papacy of Benedict XVI confronts journalists with a key question: How much critical scrutiny is appropriate when a religious leader gains enormous power? So far, most American media outlets seem to be walking on eggshells to avoid tough coverage of the new pope. Caution is in the air, and some of it is valid.…

The recent decision by General Motors to pull its advertising from the Los Angeles Times has not gone over very well. “Blame the press,” Daily Variety scoffed in mid-April, after several days of publicity about the automaker’s move. “That’s the latest coping mechanism for General Motors, whose slumping share price and falling profits have generated…

I was glad to open the New York Times last Monday and see the headline: “In Steinbeck’s Birthplace, a Fight to Keep the Libraries Open.” After visiting Salinas, Calif., over the weekend, I was eager to find out whether the disturbing and uplifting events there would gain any significant national coverage. It was a close…