This is for everyone who follows me on social media, or who has read my press criticism. All my former students. Fans of my blog, PressThink. Anyone who owns my book. Anyone who's heard me speak. It is a personal statement, from me to them. — Read the rest

Shirky and Rosen respond: "Lefty journalism professor tries to discredit the Tea Party by passing along sensational footage to his buddies at the Times!!!" Really, if this "sting" is the best that Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe can gin up, they might want to find another line of work. — Read the rest

[Video Link: "To Catch a Journalist."]

On the website of Andrew Breitbart, who wasn't always like this, this item today:

Earlier this morning, James O'Keefe's Project Veritas released a new video that sheds light on the way the New York Times promotes its favored candidates and causes, from Barack Obama to Occupy Wall Street.

Jay Rosen's "What I Think I Know About Journalism" is a four-point mini-manifesto for the future of reporting and newsgathering. Rosen indicts the current notion of reporting with the "View from Nowhere" which Peter Goodman describes as "the routine of laundering my own views [by] dinging someone at some think tank to say what you want to tell the reader." — Read the rest

The latest installment of the Canadaland media criticism podcast (MP3) (previously) features an outstanding and nuanced discussion between host Jesse Brown and NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen (previously), regarding the Trudeau government's plan to hand Canada's press a $600 million bailout, with large tranches of that money to be funneled to billionaire media barons who ran their businesses into the ground by loading them up with predatory debt while mass-firing their newsrooms and paying themselves millions in bonuses — Brown and Rosen don't just discuss the merits and demerits of this proposal, but get into a fascinating debate/discussion about what a better version of this would look like.

Washington Examiner's Jen Kerns probably wished she hadn't gone onto Joy Reid's "AM Joy" show on MSNBC. — Read the rest

For eight minutes, Breitbart's Charlie Spiering interviewed Sean Spicer, looking into the wrong camera, stumbling over his words, spacing out, sitting silently for long, awkward stretches — all with CNN running on the large flatscreens behind the President's spokesliar.

James O'Keefe is the Breitbart-affiliated fraudster and fake news pioneer who staged the hoax videos about Acorn and Planned Parenthood that disrupted the last two election cycles; his MO is to dress up in disguises and then attempt to trick progressives into saying damning things on camera (he's not very good at it, having been rumbled by both CNN and Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky).

The media made Trump: he's the perfect, click-driving mashup of fearmongering and demagoguery, and if it bleeds, it leads.

Reporters and press freedom advocates from around the world have signed on to support Netzpolitik and condemn the German government's outrageous investigation.

As the world burns—massacres in Egypt, civil war in Syria, a train disaster in Canada—CNN occupies itself with inane human interest fluff and wall-to-wall trial coverage delivered by the migrainous Nancy Grace.

Thing is, it's a ratings hit. Jay Rosen says he used to criticize CNN because he cares, but no longer cares at all. — Read the rest

From JIMROMENESKO.COM, an excellent and long list of lazy phrases writers might avoid, courtesy of Washington Post "Outlook" section editor Carlos Lozada.

At first glance, the list begs the question as to why observers, as a society, probe the narrative in that manner. — Read the rest

Grace Brown created "Project Unbreakable" in October, 2011, and the tumblog appears to really be gathering momentum. The idea: "Use photography to help heal those who were sexually abused by asking them to write a quote from their attacker on a poster and photographing them holding the poster." — Read the rest

From Jay Rosen, "Excerpt from UC Davis 2010-2012 General Catalog":

176. Introduction to Pepper Spray. (3) Lecture— 3 hours. Prerequisite: Crowd Control Through Chemicals 122B. Basic uses of pepper spray in threatening, semi-threatening and completely non-threatening and utterly peaceful situations. Common spraying techniques.

The good news: The New York Times called shenanigans on a quote in the same story the quote appeared in, saying "This is false." The less-exciting news: It happened in a story about competing pizza restaurants. But still, as Jay Rosen points out, praise is in order. — Read the rest

Video Link, more about the project here. And read the investigative report that inspired this video "explainer" at ProPublica (* warning, major bummer alert).

A snip from the lyrics:

Fracking is a form of natural gas drilling

An alternative to oil cause the oil kept spilling

Bringing jobs to small towns so everybody's willing
People turn on their lights and the drillers make a killing

Water goes into the pipe, the pipe into the ground

The pressure creates fissures 7,000 feet down

The cracks release the gas that powers your town

That well is fracked…..

Zunguzungu's got an excellent, nuanced piece on the creation and attribution of value in newsgathering and reporting. Zz reminds us that the current arrangement is perfect arbitrary and contingent: no underlying universal principle reifies certain news-related activities (writing the story), ascribes no ownership stake to other activities (sources quoted and unquoted, tipoffs, references); and damns yet another set of activities (curating, aggregating and commenting upon the news). — Read the rest

Using the Japan Sendai Quake and Tsunami to make his point, Doc Searls shows how live coverage of breaking news stories has been turned over to the internet. (via Jay Rosen)

Last night's episode of The Rachel Maddow Show (solidly guest-hosted by Chris Hayes of The Nation) focused largely on the Afghanistan war documents leaked on Sunday by Wikileaks.

I joined for a segment about the tech side of that story. — Read the rest

In "The Quest for Innocence and the Loss of Reality in Political Journalism on PressThink, Jay Rosen puts his finger on a major failing in American political journalism. Namely, that in the name of objectivity, political reporters shun evaluation of the objective truth of political claims. — Read the rest