Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/11/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Two true stories - both from the 1960s: While a young investigative reporter, Leonard Downie, Jr., now the Executive Editor of the Washington Post, wrote a major series entitled "Mortgaging The Ghetto." The series, based on God knows how many months in the D.C. Registry of Deeds and corporation records, detailed who owned huge blocks of run-down inner-city property, who was hiding behind what corporate names, etc. As a result of the series running, the Post lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate ads - and no one even told Downier what his series cost the paper until years afterwards. Similarly, Nicholas Von Hoffman, for a number of years the Post's resident lefty columnist, came up with a wonderful gimmick of taking people to lunch to interview them - at places where he knew they'd be uncomfortable. For example, he took a guy named George Willey, head of the National Welfare Rights Organization, to what was at the time THE hot fancy French restaurant. And then he took Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Washington's razor tongued grand dame, to lunch at the Hot Shoppes,the fast food chain where J. Willard Marriott built his initial fortune. Needless to say, ARL made a number of utterly scathing remarks about the lunch and surroundings. And the Marriott Corp pulled ALL it's advertising from the Post for about three weeks. Again, no one told Von Hoffman until years afterwards. - -----Original Message----- From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of RUBEN BLĘDEL Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 12:22 PM To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us Subject: Re: [Leica] BD's Point and Free Speech Our largest newspapers in Denmark ran a series of critical articles one of the largest Dansih companys that also happend to be one of the larges share holders in the same newspaper - as the editors did not remove the series of articles the large company sold all shares to a company from norway so now our largest newspaper in Danmark is a Norweigan newspaper. As Norway came at a pretty good place on the "freedom of press"- list, I guess we are safe for now. Tarek Charara wrote: >De B. D. Colen <bdcolen@earthlink.net>, le jeudi 13 novembre 2003 ą >09:53 GMT : > > > >>Marc, the role of the press it not to "protest," but to report. >> >> > >B.D., >the press also "transmits" information that was not verified by their staff. Aren't you tired of the crap that is given by government officials who request to remain anonymous. The ratio of information that comes from "anonymous" vs. verified information must be 70 to 30. I'm guessing, of course. When I read the NYT or Time Magazine, I sometimes feel that the information given is more or less biased. Here (in France) the situation is that articles can be taken out of a magazine because an advertiser does not agree with it. I've seen it happen. I've heard (this is a documentalist friend at a major TV station reporting) that information has been strongly altered to suit management's political views. > >Freedom of press? Yes, the press is free to inform, but that doesn't >mean that the information is correct or unbiased or even true. > >Tarek > >Tarek Charara >------------- >site: http://www.pix-that-stimulate.com >expo: http://www.orients-unis.net >-- >To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html > > > - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html