THE MAN HAS earned two big pictures on The New York Times‘ front page … the lead-story position on the BBC‘s World Service, persistently … not to mention endless acres of tabloid coverage in print, on TV and online.

Such is the fate of the once-gloried Olympian Oscar Pistorius, the extraordinary ‘cross-over’ athlete both disabled and able-bodied, since killing his girl-friend Reeva Steenkamp.

The world’s media are having, and will continue to have, an extended field-day with this resonant story from South Africa that comprises so many disturbing layers.      Continue reading “Story Repeated a Billion Times Worldwide” »

I GET TO TELL a little-known story on TV this weekend.

Just ahead of the centenary of Rosa Parks‘ birth, when she will be fêted throughout the nation as “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” I report for PBS on a terrible injustice being done to her memory.     Continue reading “Rosa Parks Centennial: Untold Story Clouds Legacy” »

IF COLUMNISTS WANT to follow tradition, they’ll face a binary choice at this time of year. Look back over the 12 months just gone — or look forward to those to come.

I’ve generally tended to avoid trying to predict the future. (Last year, when I gave in to the temptation, I got one entirely obvious prediction right, of course — the surge, if you’ll pardon the phrase, of Titanic coverage around the disaster’s April centenary. But I got one grim expectation utterly wrong, thankfully … that Nelson Mandela would likely die in 2012.)      Continue reading “Media Get Things WRONG! – Who Knew?” »

AN INTER-MEDIA TRANSFER is in place that celebrity-chasing reporters have been eagerly awaiting.

Movie star Katie Holmes (movie star, that is, and still newly-divorced wife of a movie mega-star, of course) takes to the boards of a Broadway live-action theater.       Continue reading “Tension: Media-Celebrity vs. Art” »

HE WAS, AS WE’VE ALL NOTED, a much-changed Barack Obama during last night’s second debate with Mitt Romney. But it was a familiar setting for him — something many in the assembled media teams would not remember.

He debated John McCain there, in the Sports and Exhibition center of Long Island’s Hofstra University — albeit then in a chair and desk-bound one-on-one session with his Republican opponent, and with CBS‘s Bob Schieffer asking the questions.              Continue reading “Obama’s Style – Aggressive Now, Always Colored by a Hero” »