Hhaing The Yu, 29, in rain falling on the ruins of his home, in a township outside Yangon, Myanmar.

This is not about politics; it is about saving people’s lives. There is absolutely no more time to lose.

— United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, pressing the military junta in Myanmar to accept international assistance as hundreds of thousands of its citizens reel from the effects of a devastating cyclone earlier this month; May 14.
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In a garbage dump in Haiti, people scavenge for food.

They look at me and say, ‘Papa, I’m hungry,’ and I have to look away. It’s humiliating and it makes you angry.

— Saint Louis Meriska of Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, whose “children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal recently and then went without any food the following day”; food prices in Haiti have spiked 45 percent since 2006; April 18.
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This is actually a boost to remind people that we can produce this kind of journalism at any time. We’re going to have a large enough newsroom to continue to produce this kind of quality journalism.

— Leonard Downie Jr., editor of The Washington Post, winner of six Pulitzer Prizes for 2008; The Post’s front-page story by media critic Howard Kurtz did not mention the paper has endured three rounds of staff cuts since 2003, but the AP’s story did; April 7; emphasis added.

I can only confirm that the route is dynamic.

— Nathan Ballard, a San Francisco city spokesman, as, said The New York Times, “The precise route remained in flux on Tuesday as the torch extravaganza threatened to become more civic migraine than celebration in the face of potential protests by those upset with China’s human rights record and recent crackdown in Tibet”; April 9.
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Newly minted New York governor David Paterson and his wife had extra-marital affairs. Former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey says he and his wife, Dina Matos McGreevey, engaged in three-way sex with his ex-aide and driver; Mrs. McGreevey says they didn’t. Meanwhile, the McGreeveys’ high-profile, salacious divorce case remains nightly news in the Garden State.

The dissection of disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, continues. On “Larry King Live,” a 15-minute, 47-second segment discusses how to catch cheating spouses.

CNN’s “Quick Vote” question today asks: “If a politician is unfaithful in his or her private life, do you think that impacts their ability to be honest in public life?” (At this writing, 54 percent voted yes.)

And it’s ho, ho, ho everywhere as “serious” journalists interview prostitutes, including discussion of their high-tech improvements and former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss proclaiming, “Dude, these are men.”
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I believe my current participation could be a distraction.

— major league baseball pitcher and accused steroids and HGH cheat Roger Clemens, in withdrawing from a scheduled appearance at an “event, which takes place largely at Disney Hollywood Studios, and lets fans interact with athletes and ESPN personalities and watch live ESPN programming”; Feb. 20.

I’m very excited about watching this game. I do want to thank your coaches. Thanks for coaching. Thanks for teaching people the importance of teamwork. I like baseball a lot, so thanks for teaching them how to play baseball, too.

— from President Bush’s remarks at a “tee ball” game between the Little Dragons and the Little Saints at Ghana International School in Accra, Ghana; Feb. 20.
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(With apologies to Dr. Denny, whom I admire greatly, and who would certainly fix journalism if he could.)

Lost in the justified hand-wringing over the loss of newspaper jobs, and the inevitable reduction in the number of important stories journalists can uncover, is the issue of “quality.” I mourn the loss of quantity in the journalistic ranks as much as anyone, and I’m betting more than some, but I am more concerned with quality these days.

I happened to run across these two articles, here and here, by Alva James-Johnson, a columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Perhaps things have changed, but in my brief brush with newspapers many years ago, one did not become a columnist until one had demonstrated a depth of knowledge, insight, erudition, and quality of thought that qualified one for something near the top of one’s profession. Columnists were the cream of the crop. I hope, based on this example, that this is not the case these days. Full Story »

An Associated Press story about a leaked internal study that accuses the Marine Corps of delays in providing mine-resistant vehicles to its forces in Iraq provides ample reason why good journalism is a social and political must, government whistleblowers ought to be fully protected from retribution, and journalists should not be compelled to identify anonymous sources.

First, the news:

Hundreds of U.S. Marines have been killed or injured by roadside bombs in Iraq because Marine Corps bureaucrats refused an urgent request in 2005 from battlefield commanders for blast-resistant vehicles, an internal military study concludes. Full Story »

Every generation of secrecy-minded bureaucrats needs a breeding ground, a dark, dank place where they can perfect the ability to hide their machinations behind closed doors and retaliate against those who believe sunlight should trump darkness.

One such place, it seems, is the student government association at Montclair State University. Last week, it froze the funding it provides to The Montclarion because the student newspaper had the temerity to hire a lawyer to help it force the association to stop regularly holding closed meetings, a possible violation of New Jersey’s open-meetings law.

Karl de Vries, editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper, said that the student government association also demanded that, according to the Associated Press, the paper “turn over correspondence between the newspaper and a lawyer The Montclarion had previously retained to challenge the student government’s practice of closing meetings to the public.”

Wednesday, amid a furor of criticism including statements from the nation’s principal professional associations of journalists, the student government association relented and temporarily restored the paper’s funding for 30 days.

The association should never have denied the paper its funding in the first place.
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I warned you last month that although Chris Dodd and a grassroots push from the blogosphere succeeded in stopping the reauthorization of laws that grant the government vast new spying powers (and immunity from prosecution for telecoms that abet and provide them), this bill would be back, and the fight would come again.

Well, it’s here. Bush is pushing for permanent authorization of the odious Protect America Act, and the extraordinary incompetence of Harry Reid is poised to let him have it. Full Story »

Earlier this week the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to relax rules against cross-ownership of different media outlets in the same region. Basically, this means that a media conglomerate can own all the outlets for information in an area–a TV station, radio station, and newspaper–without any competition.

It’s been fairly widely known that this was a goal of current FCC chair Kevin Martin for some time–a corporatist who has been generally laissez-faire towards every aspect of consolidation of media (except for the cable industry), Martin never met a merger or buyout he didn’t like. What was not widely known, but should come as no surprise, is that the FCC vote had the full support of the Bush regime. Full Story »

To ban a book is to ban an idea. Some ideas are good; some are bad. But good and bad are judgments each of us must be free to make — and learn to make.

At S&R — as do so many people in diverse media everywhere — we discuss ideas and express our opinions about them. We try to not suppress the ideas with which we disagree. Rather, we point out what we see as flaws and attempt to persuade others by providing better ideas.

The current flap diverting our attention from more pressing matters involves “The Golden Compass,” a movie derived from the first book in a trilogy called “His Dark Materials” written by Philip Pullman. His novels and the movie (review) have irritated the Catholic Church, which alleges a secularist agenda and fears the film would drive children toward Pullman’s books.
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If we want better-qualified (and honest) presidential candidates, let’s amend Article II, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution. This section says:

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

How about adding the following clause after “United States”: “and who has not passed a lie detector examination consisting of the following questions:”
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A few weeks ago I watched The US vs. John Lennon, a documentary chronicling the extraordinary lengths the American government went to in order to silence an artist who had the audacity to speak out against corruption and injustice. Of course, Lennon came from an age when artists did that sort of thing, and he wasn’t the only musician to get on the nerves of the authorities during the tumultuous ’60s and ’70s. I imagine the FBI had a file on folks like Bob Dylan, too.

But we don’t live that world anymore, do we? These days the pressure to shut up and sing is greater than ever, and those who benefit most from our silence have engineered newer and more effective means for muzzling the consciences of those whose voices can actually be heard above the deafening white noise.

Last night my wife and I watched Shut Up and Sing, another documentary about an artist who had the temerity to speak the truth. Full Story »

I recently offended some people, quite unintentionally, with my modest suggestion that perhaps it wasn’t in the best interests of the nation to hand over so much decision-making power to people who aren’t informed about the issues and their own system of government. (Responses ranged from “thoughtful disagreement” to what I believe is referred to as a “galloping hissy fit.”) Honestly, I was a bit shocked by the reaction - when I penned those remarks it hardly occurred to me that I was saying something controversial. On the other hand, it seemed to me that I was merely stating common sense.

Since that post I’ve been ruminating about the assumption embedded in the premise - that a goodly number of Americans aren’t intelligent enough to be safely entrusted with the vote. In order to bring a little more depth to this debate I thought I’d do some research to discover whether or not the nation’s citizens are under-informed, and if so, to what degree. Full Story »

Begin writing the long-term obituary of the American newspaper — at least for the newspaper envisioned by the Founders as a public service and a significant component of the checks and balances that once allowed American democracy to function properly and purposefully.

You think know the now-familiar story: Advertising revenues are down. Circulation’s declining. Corporate ownership listens to Wall Street instead of Main Street. Newspapers are shedding their older, experienced (read: more expensive to maintain) reporters and other staffers, all in service to the ROI (return on investment) demanded by stockholders of those corporate owners. All to maintain a profit level unmatched by any other American industry.

But that’s not the whole story. Some of that heralded doomsday circulation decline is intentional. The financial rationale behind that self-inflicted injury will have consequences beyond the short-term profitability of print news organizations. It will continue to erode the quality of those corporations’ principal product — journalism. It will taint online news operations — especially those promoted by bloggers as alternatives to mainstream news.
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Slashdot broke the news on Saturday that AT&T’s updated terms of service for its high-speed Internet packages essentially forbid you from criticizing the company on pain of cancellation. The full terms of service are here, and here’s the offending passage highlighted, courtesy of Ars Technica:

AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries. Full Story »