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You can arrest Andy Coulson, you can sack two hundred journalists, and take the News of the World off the face of the earth, but the problem will not go away. News is in crisis, but believing that it is a crisis stemming from the lies, deceitfulness, and illegality of hacking is misplaced. Understanding the roots of the crisis requires a critical interrogation of the terms on which newspapers in operate.

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A new report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) warned that the "independent watchdog function that the founding fathers envisioned for journalism" was at risk in local communities across the US. The report said there was a "shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting" that could lead to "more government waste, more local corruption," "less effective schools," and other problems. The 475-page report is the product of an 18-month effort to explore the turmoil sweeping the traditional media business in the US.

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It is hard to imagine the revolutions in the Middle East without Al Jazeera. The channel gave a boost to the protesters and was essential in bringing people out. Thanks to Al Jazeera, you can hear the same chants shouted by demonstrators in Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere. Al Jazeera helped save lives and forced international media to act. In Libya, as in Egypt, Al Jazeera has been shaping public opinion, challenging people.

Al Jazeera is strongest when it can talk to the people it is covering. Iranians are not watching Al Jazeera. This is why it is so exciting that Al Jazeera will soon have channels in Turkish and Swahili. The Saudis, former Egyptian regime, Gaddafi, and many Arab dictators despise Al Jazeera as do those seen as collaborating with American hegemony or with Israel. Al Jazeera is the new Gamal Abdel Nasser, the nationalist force uniting the Arab world.

News Corp's The Daily is publishing free, web-based versions to every article. Without an index, however, it is very inconvenient to find or link to individual articles from the web. And since the iPad app appears to only carry today's edition, it makes finding any historical articles you have paid for nearly impossible. So I went ahead and made one for them! Introducing, The Daily: Indexed...

The US government has just announced that it will be hosting World Press Freedom Day while at the same time trying to squash WikiLeaks. Commenters on the event's Facebook page are having a ball: "Will you be inviting Julian Assange? He's done some fantastic work in this area," wonders one. "This reminds me of the time Iran tried to join the UN womens' rights group," writes another.

State Department spokesman PJ Crowley writes:

The theme for next year's commemoration will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. New media has empowered citizens around the world to report on their circumstances, express opinions on world events, and exchange information in environments sometimes hostile to such exercises of individuals' right to freedom of expression.

At the same time, we are concerned about the determination of some governments to censor and silence individuals, and to restrict the free flow of information. We mark events such as World Press Freedom Day in the context of our enduring commitment to support and expand press freedom and the free flow of information in this digital age.

http://www.connect.connect.facebook.com/WPFD2011/posts/180945228583171

The role of the media, the role it must adopt if society is to function in a practically and morally coherent way, is to reveal power, to pester power, to hound it with questions. Because power cannot be trusted. The fact that many columnists see fit to attack WikiLeaks is evidence of how severely they have misinterpreted their mission statement. It is an indictment of the British media that its response to WikiLeaks is one of condemnation rather than troubled inner scrutiny. Its general outlook is so conservative, its relationship with the establishment so cushy, and its interests so scurrilous that it now condemns those who do their jobs properly.

The only difference between WikiLeaks and other news organisations is that Wikileaks is doing its job properly. This is not a symptom of its greater intelligence, merely its ability to comprehend the ramifications of new technology. WikiLeaks is like a symbol of globalisation. WikiLeaks represents the birth-pangs of a new media, one that cuts out the middle man to reveal the documents in full. Perhaps the media feels things moving away from it, to a world of citizen journalists and information freedom. That is an eventuality which would be far less likely if the traditional media did its constitutional duty and held the powerful to account.

TV-Nytts morgonnyheter i FST5 uteblev den här morgonen. Det var en följd av tillfällig personalbrist på redaktionen.

Como trabajadores de la información queremos que nos expliquen qué es lo que quieren de nosotros, qué es lo que pretenden que publiquemos o dejemos de publicar, para saber a qué atenernos.

Ustedes son, en estos momentos, las autoridades de facto en esta ciudad, porque los mandos instituidos legalmente no han podido hacer nada para impedir que nuestros compañeros sigan cayendo.

Es por ello que, frente a esta realidad inobjetable, nos dirigimos a ustedes para preguntarles, porque lo menos que queremos es que otro más de nuestros colegas vuelva a ser víctima de sus disparos.

Ya no queremos más muertos. Ya no queremos más heridos ni tampoco más intimidaciones. Es imposible ejercer nuestra función en estas condiciones. Indíquenos, por tanto, qué esperan de nosotros como medio.

Esta no es una rendición. Se trata de una tregua para con quienes han impuesto la fuerza de su ley en esta ciudad, con tal de que respeten la vida de quienes nos dedicamos al oficio de informar.

http://www.diario.com.mx/notas.php?f=2010/09/18&id=6b124801376ce134c7d6ce2c7fb8fe2f

It is admirable to want to apply the same standards to both sides, but straining to manufacture false equivalencies does not accomplish that; sometimes, honestly applying the same standards to each side will result in a finding that one side, at least in that regard, is actually worse. When that is the case, a person engaged in truly independent, non-ideological inquiry -- rather than the pretense of such -- will expressly acknowledge the imbalance, not concoct an equivalency where it does not exist.

In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?

In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of "scare quotes" to ensure that it is clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1/print