On Monday April 14, it was announced that the Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspapers shared the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s highest award, in the area of public service for their reporting on the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program. However, the documents supplied to both the Post and Guardian were leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Last June,...

According to a survey conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind, “What you know depends on what you watch.” “NPR and Sunday morning political talk shows,” the report says, “are the most informative news outlets, while exposure to partisan sources, such as Fox News and MSNBC, has a negative impact on people’s current events knowledge.” This follow-up report, completed in May, 2012, confirms the initial findings from a...

Continuing my look back at some stories that were, initially, major political and media firestorms, but facts later proved them to be less reliable than first believed. More on Benghazi – Wednesday’s release of the long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report on the assault on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya revealed more pertinent information. The Washington Post reported (Jan. 15) that “The...

Earlier this month, I revisited the case of NSA leaker Edward Snowden. At the time, I wrote, “There is a very real problem… when factual information is incomplete because a story is still evolving…” I thought I’d take a look at some past stories that were, initially, major political and media firestorms, but facts later proved them to be less...

All of us make mistakes, but the test of an ethical individual and organization is how they handle the aftermath of those mistakes. Last Friday (Nov. 8), CBS News reporter Lara Logan went on CBS This Morning show with an admission. “The most important thing to every person at 60 Minutes is the truth, and today the truth is that we made a...

CSI is a CBS-TV crime drama that follows “Crime Scene Investigators” – like William Peterson, Ted Danson, Elizabeth Shue and others – as they solve murders using science and analytical skills. ESI is my own ethical-sense investigative process used in researching and examining stories like the three-part series, Conspiracy Theory. (Think of me as Ted Danson… with darker hair.) The purpose of...

Early in All the President’s Men – a film that follows Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein track down and piece together the 1972 Watergate scandal – there’s a moment where editor Harry Rosenfeld is listening to Woodward read through a list of the five men caught in the break-in at the Watergate complex. When Woodward mentions that one of the...

Who was Michael Hastings and why would anyone want to assassinate him? Author-Journalist Michael Hastings was a reporter for the Internet based website, BuzzFeed and contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine. Hastings profile rose after an interview he conducted with General Stanley McChrystal in which the four-star general was both candid and critical of individuals in the Obama administration. Hastings himself spoke...

“Evidence Indicates Michael Hastings Was Assassinated” “Hastings Sent Chilling E-mail to Colleagues Before Death” “Did the Pentagon Murder Journalist Michael Hastings?” Those are just a few of the story links that stood at the top of a Google search I conducted into the death of Michael Hastings. I’m not in the habit of running down conspiracy theories that are suggested...

It’s been ten years since New York Times reporter Jayson Blair was caught having “lied and faked and cheated his way through story after story — scores of them, for years,” The Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan writes (May 4). It was the first, and hopefully, last time I ever saw a newspaper list story after story by Blair for four, full...