TresSugar

Pulitzers Can't Afford Award For Writing on Financial Crisis?

TresSugar — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:03:55 -0700

It's a big day for people who write articles that get awards - the day the 2009 Pulitzer Prizes are announced. (The Pulitzer Prize is considered the highest national honor that can be bestowed to newspaper journalists, literary writers, and composers.) This year all the hoo-hah is over what won instead of who.

So what did win? Here's the breakdown for journalism awards:

Three awards for the presidential election
Two political sex scandals
Two humanitarian crises
Two on people's right to know
One on the Iraq war
One on the environment (wildfires)
One on art

I'm hardly the first to point it out, but the glaring omission is there's no award for coverage of the financial crisis. Maybe because nobody saw it coming? There's no Pulitzer for Best Hindsight.

Is it crazy that articles on sex scandals received two awards while writing on the worst recession since 1982 was ignored? It might be, but who really cares about Pulitzer Prizes? This guy?

What Did the Press Get Wrong About Mumbai?

LibertySugar — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:00:54 -0800

Slate ran a useful piece this week looking at all the mistakes the press made in its reporting on the Mumbai massacre. Inconsistencies involved the nationalities of the killers (some were British citizens?), the planning of the assault (did the attackers visit Mumbai to spy?), and the targets of the attacks (Americans and Brits, Mumbai's luxury hotels, or anyone and everyone?). The author even takes issue with the fact that multiple publications provided different spellings of the lone remaining gunman Kasab.

The thrust of the article is that newspapers and networks should at least "warn readers of the provisional nature of their hot breaking reports."

When a crisis strikes would you rather get information quickly and do the fact-checking yourself, or do you want the outlets to remind you that they're not 100 percent sure about their reports?

Source

Fox News Gives NY Times Reporters Yellow Teeth, Big Nose

LibertySugar — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:00:02 -0700

When I came across these photos, I couldn't believe my eyes. Yesterday on Fox and Friends, Fox News aired photos of New York Times reporters, calling them "attack dogs." In the photos, reporters Jacques Steinbert and Steven Reddicliffe became the victims of yellow teeth, a receding hairline, and exaggerated features.

The Fox hosts were upset with Steinberg's recent article "Fox News Finds Its Rivals Closing In" which declared that CNN and MSNCB have added viewers at "far more dramatic rate" than Fox, so far this election. When asked if the NY Times would respond to the image doctoring, the paper's Culture Editor Sam Sifton said no thanks: "It is fighting with a pig, everyone gets dirty and the pig likes it."

Fox News has found some pretty creative ways to outrage me lately. What should be done to address this visual dishonesty? To see the video, read more.

Source