The last few days, I’ve seen and heard numerous statements by leading Republicans such as John McCain and what’s his name from Kentucky to the effect that public opinion is wildly against the health care reform legislation now moving through Congress. Maybe they’re correct. If so, it’s uninformed public opinion created by screeching, repetitious and [...]

There’s a paragraph in a column by E.J. Dionne in the Nov. 19th Washington Post that jumped out at me. The column was about Republican delaying tactics in Congress. It included this thought: “Republicans know one other thing: Practically nobody is noticing their delay-to-kill strategy. Who wants to discuss legislative procedure when there’s so much [...]

A certain person I know got a big packet, maybe 300 pages or more, from AdvantraRx, a Medicare Part D insurer, the other day. Most of the news was on one page. It said the monthly fee was going up by 68.98 percent in 2010. It didn’t say it in so many words; we had [...]

In financial reporting as in other areas, news organizations too often lose sight of the issues and focus on politics, or diversions that pass for politics. With some exceptions, that’s what has happened in covering the economic collapse. Thus, citizens and voters are consistently left with little sense of their own interests, or the country’s. [...]

During Watergate William Safire, then working for President Nixon, told the Washington Post’s editorial page editor that Nixon could handle all the attacks on himself but that the Post was hitting below the belt when it tied his appointments secretary, Dwight Chapin, to aspects of the scandal. Chapin was like a son to Nixon, Safire [...]

The press could do better at putting Obama administration actions and assertions on Afghanistan in context. I write this simply as an old newspaper editor, not an expert. The lead story in the New York Times on Sept. 4 is an example. The first paragraph said Obama’s senior advisers are trying “to determine the proper [...]

I’ve seen reports many times showing that Democratic Senator Max Baucus has received enormous sums of money from the drug and insurance industries but I haven’t seen any explanation from him as to why it’s okay to take it. Has anyone been asking Baucus to explain what he did to deserve $1,500 a day from [...]

Iason Athanasiadis, the journalist and photographer arrested in Tehran June 17th, has been released, it was reported today. He was said to have been the only non-Iranian among more than 40 journalists detained in the days of protest following the June 12th Iranian elections. Wire accounts quoted an Iranian official as saying Athanasiadis had been [...]

The Committee to Protect Journalists and other groups are issuing urgent appeals for the release of more than 40 journalists who have been arrested and are being held in Iran. Scant information about the arrests has been released. One of those being held is Iason Athanasiadis, a 2008 Nieman fellow who is said to have [...]

Dan Froomkin, deputy editor for Nieman Watchdog, has just been fired from his main job as writer of the online White House Watch column for the Washington Post. Dan will do just fine. He is talented, immensely productive, has sharp insight, good ideas and is a total self-starter. The unanswered question is, why was he [...]