AMID THE WORLDWIDE HORROR and revulsion over nine Afghan children and seven adults evidently murdered by a US soldier, it was remarkable how, in the wake of the shootings, the Afghan media were so restrained in their coverage.

‘Restrained’ is a relative term, of course. Outrage ran high, inevitably and appropriately, but it didn’t reach by any stretch the fury and mayhem — on national TV and radio and in slews of newspapers — that greeted the U.S. Army’s inadvertent burning of Korans in February … all of it incendiary fuel for the deadly protests that followed.

Continue reading “Massacre Story Sparks Both Outrage and Reflection” »

THE RECENT MEDIA EXPLOSIONS in the world’s two biggest economies could bear some clear-eyed comparisons.

It’s especially worthwhile to compare the American and the Chinese peoples’ vastly expanded access to digital media, both as consumers and increasingly as active participants and originators.

Continue reading “Heavy Hand of Media Control in China — and Here?” »

DATELINE: WASHINGTON, DC – It’s good for a Big Apple-based journalist to get out — even just to go south to the Federal District.

The Beltway may not be the best place to be reminded of opinion across the nation as a whole, but I find it a tad better listening post than New York.

Continue reading “Right-Wing Media Joins Left in Gitmo Outrage” »

ONE OF THE GRIMMER, more distressing declarations I’ve heard from a TV executive has come from Ben Sherwood, President of ABC News, just a year or so into his still-new position.

Sherwood said, in a recent interview with the New York Times‘ indefatigable Brian Stelter, that audiences themselves nowadays “pick what matters most to them, and we are trying to be adaptive.”     Continue reading “Network TV News to Adapt AND Die” »

AN UNEXPECTED CONTRAST in media modes — new and old — came through dramatically this week.

On one hand — stark, direct and unmediated — there was the worldwide transmission, via the Bambuser.com website and its anonymous user handled as “Baba-omer,” of raw images and gut-wrenching sounds out of the Syrian city Homs, as it got horrifically pummeled by mortar bombing from President Bashar al-Assad‘s forces. On the other hand, the world celebrated 200 years of Charles Dickens (pictured left) a communicator greatly loved across many cultures but without question always a very present mediator of his audience’s experience — and you might say a determined manipulator of it.    Continue reading “The Reporting Behind Two Centuries of Dickens’ Impact” »