THE MEDIA BEAT
Veteran journalist David Tereshchuk’s ongoing review of global media coverage.
New columns appear periodically on this page, below.
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The Media Beat columns.
The Reporting Behind Two Centuries of Dickens' Impact
AN UNEXPECTED CONTRAST in media modes — new and old — came through dramatically this week.
Mixed-Media Extravaganza -- and a Global Message
POSSIBLY THE BEST WORD for it, and it’s meant approvingly, is ‘farrago‘.
New York’s Lincoln Center, specifically its august resIdent The Metropolitan Opera, is currently wowing much of its faithful audience and enticing a newer public (which looked to me quite a younger one) with its decidedly multimedia — and multiply-sourced — confection known as The Enchanted Island.
Struggle Through Decades to Overturn Massacre Lies
THIS WEEKEND BRINGS A PIQUANT moment for me — a telling anniversary in the chronicles of information-management, as well as a horrifying memory in itself. At 4.10 p.m. Sunday afternoon, exactly 40 years ago, I witnessed soldiers shooting innocent civilians dead, an atrocity that officialdom instantly lied about — and provoked a four-decade struggle to get the truth finally established. I’m able nowadays to record how — thanks to great journalistic effort, a determined community’s campaigning, and in the end some responsible governmental and legal responses to pressure — the tangled story of Northern Ireland’s “Bloody Sunday” eventually reached a powerful and welcome resolution.
SOPA and PIPA Battle Far From Over
THEY LINED UP in familiar opposing ranks. On one side Rupert Murdoch, sounding crustier than ever now that he tweets … the Motion Picture Association of America (which of course includes Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox studios) … and other traditional media conglomerates like NBC Universal. On the other side, younger digital dynamos like Google, Mozilla, WordPress and Wikipedia.
Cyber Threats -- and Remedies -- Get Overdue Airing
THANK YOU, DIGITAL REVOLUTION! You’ve given us many benefits, to be sure, but now this. We are living, apparently, at the mercy of people with the manners of a chimpanzee and the tongue of a Sicilian fishwife.
Presidential Media 'Contest' Pales Beside China Challenge
IT WAS GUARANTEED TO GET full media attention, President Barack Obama‘s unprecedented trip to the Pentagon to personally announce the US military’s mid-term future.
2012 Media Predictions, Besides Who Wins White House
THE YEAR AHEAD OFFERS a few salient peaks of interest for the media consumer. But I’m not talking of the U.S. presidential election, which already has a lackluster feel.
For all the media bloviators’ efforts to make it seem exciting, Iowa’s Republicans unenthusiastically favored Mitt Romney by a slim margin this week, and New Hampshire’s will do so dutifully by a larger margin next week. It’s all too simple a story from now on. Romney will be Barack Obama‘s challenger and he will lose in November, given a continuance of the economy’s gradual, if somewhat undramatic recovery. If, however, that recovery’s snail-pace does not deliver improvement at a sufficient rate, then — unremarkably — it will be Obama who loses. Like I say, simple.
Stories That Set A World Ablaze
THIS MEDIA YEAR, WHICH IS closing with courtroom cameras covering Egypt’s deposed President Hosni Mubarak on trial for killing his own citizens in the streets, opened with those streets astir with protests.
The Phone's Fickle Power -- in Text and Image
WHAT IS THE MOST MENDACIOUS MEDIUM? We get an answer, in early word of a study to be published in next March’s issue of the Journal of Business Ethics. Did you know there was a Journal of Business Ethics? Well, there is — published by the long-established publishing house of Springer, founded in 1842 in Berlin and now a world-wide enterprise. I wonder how many businesspeople know there is a Journal of Business Ethics.
Century of Influence -- Undervalued By Mainstream
THIS DECLINING YEAR has been the centennial of Marshall McLuhan‘s birth — the man who was, if not the father or godfather, then at least our leading prophet of media-driven political and social change.
Pakistan Now Worst Killing-Field for Journalists
2011 LOOKS LIKE YET ANOTHER bad year for journalists. Bad once again in the most down-to-earth terms — getting killed.
French Claim for Origins of Investigative Journalism
PARIS, France – OVERSEAS CAPITALS DO SERVE to offer new perspectives. I was surprised early in my trip here to read in Le Monde the claim that Voltaire, a writer I already greatly admired, deserves an extra, and to me unexpected, accolade as “Father of Investigative Journalism.”
Post-war Withdrawal Quandaries Challenge Media Analysis
WITH THE LONGEST WAR in American history, and the third longest, now both in sight of ending, US media are scattered … you might say confused and conflicted … in assessing what happens next.
Clamp-down on Free Press ... From Winners of Freedom!
JOURNALISTS, EVEN WHILE EXHIBITING cynicism and world-weariness, can also be extremely sensitive. When they feel betrayed, they feel it extra-powerfully.
Story of the Year - Goes Largely Unnoticed
NEWSROOMS EVERYWHERE ARE are compiling their year-end lists. People of the year, movie of the year, gaffe of the year, all that sort of thing.
Post-holiday Persuasion to Get Us Giving
THE ‘GIVING’ PART of Thanksgiving is, inevitably, what the charity industry’s media experts focus on every November. Outsiders are sometimes astonished to learn that it’s some 40% of all charitable giving that happens at the end of the year.
Publishing's Renewed Holiday Push For Memoirs, an Enduring Genre
THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY has now fully readied itself for the holidays, we can be sure. And its offerings include — as they have every season since the late, great Frank McCourt‘s Angela’s Ashes and the great, and still-very-much-with-us, Mary Karr‘s The Liar’s Club ramped up our national craze for memoirs some 16 years ago — yet more aggressively-promoted slices of first-person recollection. And why not, since it’s still such an abiding enthusiasm among readers? Riding high in this month’s New York Times sales charts — combining both e-books and hard-copy versions — are memoirs by Joan Didion, Ellen DeGeneres and Condoleezza Rice.
Bloomberg's Media Plan for Evicting "Occupy" -- and His Failure
THERE WAS A SIMPLE trick, as ever, to the timing.
New York City’s police sweep through the Occupy Wall Street encampment, cannily timed for 1:00am, did successfully catch much of the media on their back foot (or even perhaps asleep).
Crime Stories - Direct From The Coal Face
TO AFFLICT THE COMFORTABLE is one mission of the media, as famously defined by the now almost anonymous columnist Finley Peter Dunne, while he paired that duty with comforting the afflicted. And we should also add, of course, telling truth to power.
Image-Making: At a Deadly Price
WELL AT LEAST GAZA IS NOW on the media front-burner again. That was the conflicted reaction, simultaneously excited and horrified, of quite a few assignment-hardened Middle East observers that I maintain contact with.