He doesn’t merely mean that mass shootings are now covered more frequently and more intensively. He is suggesting that the media learned to treat “mass shootings” as a category, and at times to expand that category’s boundaries. “It seems to me ‘mass shooting’ is a bit of a nebulous term,” the linguist Ben Zimmer told Roeder. And that, Zimmer added, has “allowed journalists to use it as kind of a catch-all.”
The sociologist Joel Best once wrote that “crime waves” frequently turn out to be little more than “waves in media attention: they occur because the media, for whatever reason, fix upon some sort of crime, and publicize it.”
Press
Blogging, Free Markets, Press
Markets Need a Vigorous, Vigilant Defense
While everybody benefits from a competitive market system, nobody benefits enough to spend resources to lobby for it. Business has very powerful lobbies; competitive markets do not. The diffused constituency that is in favour of competitive markets has few incentives to mobilise in its defence.
This is where the media can play a crucial role. By gathering information on the nature and cost of cronyism and distributing it among the public at large, media outlets can reduce the power of vested interests. By exposing the distortions created by powerful incumbents, they can create the political demand for a competitive capitalism.
Via A strong press is best defence against crony capitalism @ The Financial Times.
GOP, Politics, Presidential Race 2016, Press, Trump
Huffpo Stuffs Trump
“After watching and listening to Donald Trump since he announced his candidacy for president, we have decided we won’t report on Trump’s campaign as part of The Huffington Post’s political coverage. Instead, we will cover his campaign as part of our Entertainment section. Our reason is simple: Trump’s campaign is a sideshow. We won’t take…
Free Speech, Press
How the Feds’ Subpoena of Reason and Gag Order Went Public
And now you know – –
Crime, Militarized Policing, Police, Police Brutality, Police Misconduct, Press, Television
Wolf Blitzer Struggles to Understand News He’s Been Covering for Years, Etc.
Press
Ten Sound Tenets
As Bill Buzenberg steps down as executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, he takes leave by offering ten tenets of his organization. A better statement of journalistic principles one is unlikely to find. Best wishes to Mr. Buzenberg. Here, in full, the precious gift he leaves his organization, and others by inspiration: Ten…
Censorship, Press, Surveillance
Warming to Censorship at the NYT
….The free press and freedom from government prior restraint is the check and balance here. We don’t have a “policy” that authorizes the media to publish leaks. We have a constitutional right to do so, and it horrifies me to see an editor who thinks that the First Amendment is some sort of government “policy” and…
Blogging, Law, Press
Law bloggers as a gift to reporters and publishers
Veteran blogger and developer, Dave Winer (@davewiner), hit on why bloggers are so important to reporters in a post last week. “Bloggers are your sources. They are the people who previous generations of reporters had to reach by telephone. These days reporters can skim hundreds of perspectives on the web, prioritized by search engines. The…
Free Speech, Newspapers, Press, Regulations
The fight for a free press – in Britain
Newspaper bosses last night announced plans to mount an extraordinary legal challenge to plans to impose on the Press a Royal Charter written by politicians. They are to argue that the Government’s handling of a rival Royal Charter proposed by the newspaper and magazine industry was unlawful. Industry bodies – through the Press Standards Board…
Blogging, Law, Legislation, Press
Who in the Wiki-Age is a journalist?
Incumbent politicians hope to define journalism their way: A new Senate bill to protect journalists has stirred up a hornet’s nest of criticism over an old nagging question: Who in the age of WikiLeaks is a “journalist”? A bill called the Free Flow of Information Act of 2013 was sent by the Senate Judiciary Committee…
Censorship, Press
A Sri Lankan Journalist Eagerly Toes the Line
Rajpal Abeynayake, 50, is the editor in chief of The Daily News, the country’s largest English-language daily newspaper, which is wholly owned by the government. He is also the host of a morning radio program, and the two platforms make him the most influential English-language journalist in Sri Lanka. His position atop Sri Lanka’s journalistic…
Free Speech, Press
‘The First Amendment is first for a reason’
Admirable: There’s a calm confidence to the way she relates the story that is striking, and very American. She repeats one of her favourite expressions: “The First Amendment is first for a reason. It makes me feel a little like I’m pontificating to cite the founders of this country, but it’s true they were so…
Press, Surveillance
Servile before the State
The established press wonders why it’s collapsing. Here’s a quick answer: Edward Snowden’s secrets may be dangerous. I would not have published them If MI5 warns that this is not in the public interest who am I to disbelieve them? Via Edward Snowden’s secrets may be dangerous. I would not have published them @ Comment…
Free Speech, Press
The press freedom crisis
A threat to press freedom is an assault on our right to know. A new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists tries to capture the invisible impact of the Obama administration’s troubled relationship with the press. The report, authored by Leonard Downie Jr., former executive editor of the Washington Post, and CPJ’s Sara Rafsky,…
Legislation, Press, Regulations
Britain’s press regulation looks like … Idi Amin’s in Uganda
Yesterday the Government announced its plans to introduce a system of state press regulation. Today, the Lobbying Bill continues its sorry passage through the House of Commons. Other than their capacity to make me deeply depressed, what else do these two idiotic proposals have in common? They are both the product of the same kind…
Blogging, Censorship, China, Press
The Party crackdowns on ‘rumors’
BEIJING–A Chinese investigative journalist who has accused officials of corruption has been arrested, his lawyer said on Oct. 10, becoming the latest in a series of government critics to be swept up in Beijing’s crackdown on rumors. Liu Hu, a reporter with the Guangzhou-based newspaper New Express, was arrested on a charge of defamation on…
Liberty, Press, Regulations
Britain moves to a regulated press
Censorship, Free Speech, Press
How the party cracks down
(The report entitled “Vietnam: programmed death of freedom of information” is available in PDF format here.) At a time when free speech and freedom of information are constantly violated in Vietnam, Reporters Without Borders is publishing a report on the Southeast Asian nation that is entitled “Programmed death of freedom of information.” Released on the…
Free Speech, Press
Trumpeting a New Victory in War on Freedom of the Press
There’s something profoundly despicable about a Justice Department that would brazenly violate the First and Fourth Amendments while spying on journalists, then claim to be reassessing such policies after an avalanche of criticism — and then proceed, as it did this week, to gloat that those policies made possible a long prison sentence for a…
Censorship, Crime, Press
Tunisian Journalist Out on Bail
But the government says the detention is the judiciary‘s fault: Journalist Zied el-Heni was released on bail today after a three-day detention for accusing prosecutors of falsifying evidence in the case of a cameraman Mourad Mehrezi. Mehrezi had been arrested for filming the egging of a government minister. Hundreds of people protested el-Heni’s arrest on…