And since you brought it up...

In the Comment of the Day, Dwayne N. Zechman expands usefully on the Ethics Alarms post about CNN ignoring the developing story about its own talk show host, Piers Morgan.

  So I’ll return the favor and expand on his comment.

For every post on Ethics Alarms regarding unethical journalism or media bias, I could write ten. Believe it or not, I try hard to keep the topic to a minimum number of posts; it is a close second to politics among the daily temptations I have to resist in fulfilling the blog’s mission as a broad and eclectic, rather that narrow, examination of U.S. ethical issues and controversies.

Fresh distortions of the news by the media and its often jaw-dropping deceitfulness in reporting stories create potential topics for me every  day, and usually many times a day. Here’s an example from yesterday: I was shocked to find out that the FAA funding, which was held up in limbo while FAA workers missed paychecks, was stuck in the Democratic-controlled Senate, having been duly passed by the Republican-controlled House. The previous day, both President Obama and scores of news stories and TV news features had harshly criticized “Congress” for leaving D.C. for vacations while Federal workers were being stiffed. I assumed, as almost everyone presumed, based on the “hostage” rhetoric being used by pundits and columnists and the just-completed debt-ceiling deal, that it was the GOP-controlled House of Representatives that was causing the problem. And that, unquestionably, is exactly what the White House wanted the public to believe, as well as what the media went out its way to make certain the public did believe, by what its reporters and pundits didn’t report and didn’t clarify. Continue reading →