That’s the title of my article yesterday in USA Today, suggesting how the media can try to cover the crime in a way that does not increase the risk of a copycat effect. Also on USA Today, I participated in a Web Chat with a pair of representatives of the Brady Campaign, available here. A […]
Archive | Media
NBC Fires a Producer Who Was Responsible for Gross Mis-Editing of the George Zimmerman 911 Tape
According to The New York Times (thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer), NBC News has fired a producer who was involved in the production of a misleading segment about the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. The Today show segment had Zimmerman saying, This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black. Here’s […]
Lawyers Who Voted for Obama Want his Health Care Law to be Upheld
That’s the gist of this L.A. Times front page article by David Savage, but the headline instead promises Signs of Supreme Court activism worry Reagan administration lawyers. It turns out that the only “Reagan Administration lawyers” they are able to quote are Charles Fried and Doug Kmiec, both of whom quite publicly endorsed candidate Obama […]
NBC Internal Investigation of the Apparent Gross Mis-Editing of the George Zimmerman 911 Tape
Erik Wemple (Washington Post) reports: NBC told this blog today that it would investigate its handling of a piece on the “Today” show that ham-handedly abridged the conversation between George Zimmerman and a dispatcher in the moments before the death of Trayvon Martin. A statement from NBC: “We have launched an internal investigation into the […]
Why Most People Tend to Talk About Politics Only with those Who Agree with Them
Economist Robin Hanson has a blog post discussing a recent study showing that most people tend to limit conversations about politics to those who agree with their views. This is not just a matter of people tending to have friends and acquaintances who have similar views. Even when there are people in our social circle […]
More on the New York Times, Israel and Neil Lewis in CJR
Last week, I posted a short piece on an article by Neil Lewis in the Columbia Journalism Review, discussing whether the New York Times reporting is hostile to Israel. As I noted, Lewis gets the basic story right–the Times’ isn’t anti-Israel, as such, but its reporting on Israel tends toward the adversarial, for two reasons. […]
CJR on the New York Times and Israel
I’ve blogged before about the New York Times’ coverage of Israel, so I thought I’d point out a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review by former Times reporter Neil Lewis on that precise topic. Unfortunately, it’s trite, largely repeating what any fair-minded observer already knows: first, that the Times is not hostile to Israel, per […]
Even Worse Than We Had Hoped: Inside Local TV News
Note: This is the second of two book “reviews” I’ve been hoping to do since about August, but my fall got so busy with actual paying work that they were both pushed off until the delightfully slow week between Christmas and New Years. “First Thing We Do, Let’s Deregulate All the Lawyers” was the first, […]
Linda Greenhouse Questions Roe v. Wade
That wasn’t her intent, of course–Greenhouse was famously rebuked by her editors at the New York Times for marching in an abortion rights rally in 1989 in D.C.–but consider her recent blog post: Earlier this month, the American Bar Association traveled north to Toronto for its annual meeting. Doing some homework for a panel I […]
Identifying Experts’ Political Affiliations and Funding Sources in the Media
Liberal Pittsburgh political blogger “Davyoe” complains that the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review misleadingly portrayed me as a “politically neutral” expert when they interviewed me about the recent individual mandate decision a few days ago. The type of issue he raises is commonly brought up these days: While his description above seems politically neutral (he’s just described as […]
Suggestions for your periodical reading list
Although on-line reading continues to grow, many people still enjoy old-fashioned printed periodicals. In the spirit of gratuitous advice, here are some suggestions for print subscriptions. First of all, if you’re conscientious about registering for the frequent flyer program every time you step on an airplane, you may accumulate a few thousand points on various airlines which […]
USA Today Refuses to Correct its Misrepresentation of My Statements About the Individual Mandate Litigation
I regret that I must report that USA Today refuses to correct the misrepresentation of my views about the individual mandate litigation that I pointed out in this post. I pointed out the mistake in e-mails to Joan Biskupic, the author of the article in question, and the editors of USA Today. Both refused to […]
Misquoted in USA Today
By Ilya Somin on April 14, 2011 8:33 pm in Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Media, Press
One of the dangers of commenting on hot-button legal issues is that reporters will sometimes misquote you. That happened to me in today’s front-page USA Today story on the individual mandate litigation by prominent legal reporter Joan Biskupic, which cited me as follows: George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin argued at a recent forum […]
The Annals of Objective Reporting
Ryan J. Foley, AP, begins a “news” article as follows: “To end a high-stakes stalemate over union rights that has captured the nation’s attention, a handful of Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin might have to stand up to their new governor.” There is no indication in the article that such defections are in any way likely. […]
New York Times (?) on “Jewish Voice for Peace”
As regular readers know, I’m often critical of the New York Times’ reporting on various matters. But this morning, the ninth most popular article on the New York Times website, about the hard-leftist “Jewish Voice for Peace,” is not even a Times piece, but reprinted from a local San Francisco online startup called the Bay […]