TV News LIES

Following a Columbia Journalism Review article on whether science journalists should accept money from corporate interests, and whether there is adequate disclosure of sources’ corporate ties and conflicts of interest, U.S. Right to Know reviewed recent articles to assess how often journalists and columnists quote academic sources without stating that they are funded by the agrichemical giant Monsanto, which produces pesticides and GMOs.

Our review found 27 articles quoting (or authored by) university professors after they received Monsanto funding, but without disclosing that funding.

Hacker group Anonymous said it has taken down 5,500 Twitter accounts linked to the Islamic State days after declaring war on the militant group.

The loose collective of hackers said "OpParis," or Operation Paris, the team that launched the digital assault on the IS, is collecting the details from the accounts, verifying them through a "trusted individual" and will be turning over the information to authorities.

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In August, foreign ministers from 10 nations blasted China for building artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea. As media around the world covered the diplomatic clash, a radio station that serves the most powerful city in America had a distinctive take on the news.

Located outside Washington, D.C., WCRW radio made no mention of China’s provocative island project. Instead, an analyst explained that tensions in the region were due to unnamed “external forces” trying “to insert themselves into this part of the world using false claims.”

As violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories returns to the headlines, critics are complaining that many prominent U.S. news outlets often omit or misrepresent contextual information vital to understanding the conflict. And perhaps predictably, partisans on both sides are targeting media coverage for different reasons.

A common complaint among some critics concerns some major U.S. media outlets’ characterization of neighborhoods and the legal and political context of the Israeli presence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. “The biggest problem … is total lack of context in reporting in which all of this is taking place,” said Yousef Munayyer, the executive director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

A new film starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford explores the notorious ‘60 Minutes’ piece on George W. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard record, and the anchorman’s subsequent fall.

It was the great Henry David Thoreau who once said, “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” And it’s the Thoreauian tenets of self-reliance—the pursuit of unvarnished truth and resistance to institutional authority—that motivates many in the journalism profession.

The National Geographic magazine has been a nonprofit publication since inception in 1888, but that ends today. The long-running American publication becomes very much for-profit under a $725 million dollar deal announced today with 21st Century Fox, the entertainment company controlled by the family of Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch is a notorious climate change denier, and his family's Fox media empire is the world's primary source of global warming misinformation. Which would be no big deal here, I guess, were it not for the fact that the National Geographic Society's mission includes giving grants to scientists.

Or had you forgotten? Here's a refresh for you, a fun little interview with Murdoch on his climate change views.