It looks like they ought to just shut Scotland Yard down and start over from scratch.
The Metropolitan Police is using the UK’s Official Secrets Act, which is normally used for spying cases, to ask the courts to order The Guardian to reveal its sources on the Milly Dowler story. It’s a jaw-dropping abuse by an institution disgraced by its coverup of the Murdoch hacking scandal, which was exposed primarily by The Guardian.
Even if the paper succeeds in turning back the demand, it could have a chilling effect on sources’ willingness to expose corruption.
The Guardian itself calls it “an unprecedented legal attack on journalists’ sources.” Hero MP Tom Watson says it’s “an outrageous abuse and completely unacceptable.” And the journalists’ union calls it “a very serious threat to journalists” and a “vicious attempt to use the Official Secrets Act.”
Best of all, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger says “We shall resist this extraordinary demand to the utmost.”
This is one to watch closely.
— The Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone takes a good look at Reuters’ expansion, which is good news for business journalism:
Reuters’ recent hiring spree — including a handful of Pulitzer Prize-winners - has quickly gotten the media world’s attention. At the same time, Reuters has relaunched its website to better showcase its vast reporting in a more consumer-friendly way, stepped up social media efforts and increased analysis, opinion and enterprise reporting — all elements that may play better on the web than in straight wire copy.Reuters isn’t giving up on breaking financial news that paying subscribers want or reporting international wire stories that cash-strapped newspapers, lacking foreign budgets, increasingly need. However, Deputy Editor-in-Chief Paul Ingrassia says the company wants to go beyond breaking news. “I think what we’re making a bigger effort to do is not only be first with events,” Ingrassia said, “but very quickly and analytically … report the meaning and impact of those events.”
And there’s this about the hiring they’ve done from The Wall Street Journal:
One of Adler’s goals as editor-in-chief is to increasingly tap into the vast amount of data within Thomson Reuters to produce articles of interest to subscribers. But first Adler had to build a new editorial leadership team — one that’s looking like the Wall Street Journal in exile. Ingrassia spent over three decades at the Journal and Dow Jones, where he won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the auto industry and later ran Dow Jones Newswires. Three other former Journal staffers are on board, too: former Chief Operating Officer Stuart Karle, data editor Reginald Chua, and enterprise editor Mike Williams.
These days, media executives often joke about how former Journal staffers now run everything except the Journal. Bloomberg Chief Content Officer Norman Pearlstine previously held the top job at the paper, and former Journal reporter Matthew Winkler is Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief. Jill Abramson and Marcus Brauchli, the top editors at the New York Times and Washington Post, respectively, also hail from the Journal.
The positive changes have been obvious for at least a year now. The enterprise team under Jim Impoco did a lot of great work, and is continuing to do so.
— Dean Baker blows up the core paragraph of an New York Times story this morning on Denmark electing a center-left government.
Here’s the NYT:
For Denmark, a nation of 5.5 million people, the election turned on the issue that has also divided many other Western nations struggling with low growth, large government deficits and historic levels of national debt: what mix of government spending and tax policies to adopt in order to restore economic health and avoid slipping further toward a crisis like Greece’s.
Baker:
According to the IMF, Denmark’s debt to GDP ratio is projected to be just over 4 percent at the end of 2011. By comparison, Greece’s debt to GDP ratio is 150 percent. Greece’s annual interest burden is considerably larger than Denmark’s debt.
That’s national debt, folks. Not deficit. Ouch.
The errors of commission and omission at The NYT are hard to credit. Despite the fact that the paper's Public Editor is alert (although I sometimes wonder if lawyers for the paper are warning him off certain flawed stories), the lapses indicate systemic problems.
In the background, journalism schools need to get much better at teaching information management. Continuing education for journalists needs to be improved dramatically. Bedrock is cognition: Mark Ashcraft's text "Cognition." Also, language. The COBUILD English Grammar. The failed NYT language column by Zimmer obviously could not get focus. (Usage notes do not cut it).
[NYT: Denmark to Be Led by Its First Female Premier as Leftists Win By JOHN F. BURNS Published: September 15, 2011
August 4, 2011 NYT: Calls for CNN Host to Testify in Hacking Scandal
By JOHN F. BURNS Correction: August 31, 2011
An article on Aug. 5 about British lawmakers’ calls for Piers Morgan, the CNN talk show host and a former editor of a British tabloid, to appear before a parliamentary committee investigating illegal hacking of cellphone messages contained a number of errors.]
#1 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Fri 16 Sep 2011 at 06:18 PM
Ryan, I've never heard that Danish debt to GDP was that low. When I tried to find a source I couldnt.
here is a bloomberg story:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-09-16/denmark-s-new-government-pledges-to-meet-eu-s-deficit-limit.html
Denmark’s budget deficit will exceed the EU’s 3 percent limit and reach 3.8 percent of gross domestic product this year, before widening to 4.6 percent in 2012, the Finance Ministry said Aug. 24. The average deficit in the euro area will be 4.3 percent in 2011 and improve to 3.5 percent in 2012, according to the European Commission’s latest forecasts from May.
--seems that the figure Baker used has to have been deficit not debt.
best regards
/a
#2 Posted by aaron, CJR on Mon 19 Sep 2011 at 05:47 AM
Come on, Mr.Clayton Burns, where is your razor pencil? Can you find a better way to indicate/glimpse what students have experienced, gone through, understood, retained; to show that they can bring to bear relevant, sentences, skills, affect,from different forms and fields of knowledge, to deal fast with old or new situations, than a well thought out and reliable GCE o level set of readings, questions, performances? One that is affordable, doable, public, fair, rigorous, reasoned, ... ?
#3 Posted by Duri Naimji, CJR on Wed 22 Aug 2012 at 01:02 AM
Yes,Naimj, your sentence is long and pompous. What do you mean by form of knowledge, field of knowledge?
You have to be a professional educator to make sense of that, I fear.
Critical and subtle matters are not picked up by the way side. dropping tid bits
of educational jargon does not make one into a professional in education. Making informed choices,
carrying them out effectively, on time, with least expense, under pressure, etc.
in a wide range of situations, needs lots of relevant, ready, usable information,skills, priorities. etc. What better preparation for this than GCE o level?
Not much room for parents, friends, pedlars,.. to help out/ do it for students with assignments as often happens, presumably. I submit..
#4 Posted by Duri Naimji, CJR on Wed 21 Nov 2012 at 06:05 PM