Low nutrition news
Does
poor foreign reporting give viewers a distorted impression of the
developing world?
An earthquake in Iran leaves 40,000 dead. Two-hundred
people are trampled to death in Mecca. Cyclone Heta destroys the tiny
Pacific Island of Niue. December and January were just another couple
of months of death and disaster in the third world. Hardly seems out
of the ordinary. After all, it’s always bad news down there,
right?
Global news output has never been higher; international
communication has never been easier. So why is it that so many people
have a distorted impression of the developing world? Could it be that
their main source of this information – the TV news media –
is failing in its job? Read
more...
Secret sources
Should
journalists protect the identity of whistleblowers and insiders no
matter what the cost?
If anything clear emerged from the Hutton inquiry
and the tragic death of Dr Kelly, it was the potentially serious consequences
of revealing the identity of a secret source. The actions of the unfortunate
Andrew Gilligan have been the subject of much debate, but he is not
the first journalist to clash with the government over such a source.
Read more...
The Hutton Report
Where
did the BBC go wrong, and how will Lord Hutton's conclusions affect
British journalism?
When Andrew Gilligan picked up the phone on the morning of May 29th
and went live on the Today programme, he could never have dreamed
that what he was about to say would dominate the headlines for the
rest of 2003. During his unscripted report, Gilligan claimed that
the government had inserted a claim it knew was probably wrong in
its dossier on Saddam Hussein’s weapons capability – that
Saddam could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes.
Gilligan described the source of this claim as “a senior official
in charge of drawing up the dossier.” Both of these claims were
wrong, and in making them Gilligan ignited the biggest scandal in
the BBC’s long history. Read
more...
