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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged conflicts of interest

1. June 10, 2011 03:39 PM

   AT&T Buys Nonprofit Support for its Anticompetitive Merger

   Politico and the Washington Post follow the money

   By Ryan Chittum

   It ought to raise eyebrows when groups like the NAACP, GLAAD, and the nation's largest teachers union lobby to approve a cellphone company merger. Fortunately it does at Politico, which has a good story looking at how AT&T's monopoly bid is getting public support from nonprofits that have nothing to do with telecom. Well, that last bit's not quite right....

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2. April 15, 2011 04:21 PM

   Audit Notes: AP Spill, Reporting on Your Parent, Bloomberg Babies

   By Ryan Chittum

   This Associated Press story had me scratching my head. It says Citgo spilled 265,000 barrels of oil in the Delaware River in 2004—the third-biggest oil spill in U.S. history. The judge cleared Citgo of liability in the third-largest oil spill in U.S. waters, which occurred when the single-hull Greek tanker struck a rusty anchor long submerged in the riverbed. Nearly...

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3. August 23, 2012 11:00 AM

   CBS goofs up the green beat

   Network fails to disclose M. Sanjayan’s affiliation and ties to source

   By Curtis Brainard

   Only two months after hiring him, CBS News has already botched a report from its new science and environment contributor, allowing him to interview a fire ecologist from The Nature Conservancy without mentioning that the contributor is the lead scientist at the very same group. When CBS gave M. Sanjayan the job in May, a variety of critics argued that...

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4. September 22, 2011 06:34 PM

   ESPN Obscures Its Own Role in the Conference Realignment Mess

   The network's $300 million deal with Texas, at the heart of the news, goes almost unmentioned

   By Ryan Chittum

   If you cover college sports for ESPN, you've got a real problem right now. The biggest story these days is the conference realignment that's bringing tectonic shifts to the NCAA landscape, ending century-old rivalries, and setting longtime partners at each others' throats. Problem is, ESPN itself is at the heart of why this is happening. Its Longhorn Network deal with...

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5. October 25, 2012 05:15 PM

   Junkets masquerading as prizes

   To avoid conflicts of interest, read the fine print

   By Curtis Brainard

   With dwindling support for travel in most newsrooms, journalists may be tempted to apply for one of the many prizes or programs that offer the chance to get out of the office and visit a new destination—but buyer beware. The Knight Science Journalism Tracker’s Paul Raeburn wrote a series of three posts about the risks associated with some of these...

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6. September 20, 2011 07:33 PM

   The SEC’s Madoff Mess Gets Worse

   The commission's former top lawyer faces a possible criminal conflict of interest investigation

   By Ryan Chittum

   Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson report that the SEC's inspector general is referring the David M. Becker case to the Justice Department for possible criminal investigation. That's a very big deal. Back in February, Madoff victims' trustee Irving Picard sued Becker, who was then the SEC's top lawyer, for $1.5 million in "ill-gotten gains" Becker's mother bequeathed his family from...

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7. July 23, 2012 11:00 AM

   When a news executive sits on a bank’s board

   The FT Group’s Fairhead is a director of troubled HSBC

   By Ryan Chittum

   It’s unusual—rare, even—for the CEO of a major financial news and information concern to serve on the board of directors of a giant global bank. There’s a reason for that. Rona Fairhead, who heads the Financial Times Group, the unit of British publishing and education giant Pearson PLC that owns the Financial Times newspaper, sits on the board of HSBC,...

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