Not the obituary I wanted to read today.

In an age of shrinking news budgets and the erosion of quality journalism, Anthony Shadid was the exception. His insightful reporting on the Middle East and other parts of the world reminded us that there still are journalists out there doing amazing work for all the right reasons. With tensions between the U.S. and Iran and Israel flaring up again, his reporting is needed now more than ever.

He passed away Thursday at the age of 43. Certainly a huge loss for his family and friends, but also a major loss for anyone who cares about quality journalism and people who do things the right way.

Whatever it is, it’s clear that Wikileaks is a lot more popular in other parts of the world than it is in the U.S. Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com’s staunch defender of the site, noted this weekend that the organization received a Walkley Award, Australia’s highest journalistic honor. The group honored Wikileaks for:

WikiLeaks applied new technology to penetrate the inner workings of government to reveal an avalanche of inconvenient truths in a global publishing coup.

Its revelations, from the way the war on terror was being waged, to diplomatic bastardry, high-level horse-trading and the interference in the domestic affairs of nations, have had an undeniable impact.

The group did note that Wikileaks’ flaws are far outweighed by its contribution to the understanding of reality around the world, and the fact that its commitment to whistleblowers “has empowered people all over the world.”

It’s fair to note that Wikileaks’ creator and public face Julian Assange is an Australian citizen, and the Walkley’s are based in that country. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that in some countries Assange and Wikileaks represent a triumph of journalism, while in the U.S., politicians of all stripes and mainstream media organizations team up to attack the organization. (See this thorough examination of the attacks on Wikileaks from the Atlantic).

So where do you stand on Wikileaks? Good for journalism? Bad for journalism? Vote below, and add your thoughts and ideas in the comment section.

Source: Frugal dad

The funny thing is that as I shut down the poll, it’s clear that almost nobody agrees on how the coverage has been. I gave several options for voters: Coverage has been “too little,” “too much,” “about right,” “fair,” or “unfair.”

Out of 25 votes – yes, Virginia, 25 whole votes! – we have a three-way split between “too much” (nine votes), “about right” (seven votes) and “unfair” (eight votes). One person said there’s been “too little” Occupy Wall Street coverage in the media.

The one thing the voters do agree on, however, is that none of the coverage has been “fair.” Not one of the 25 people said they thought the coverage has been fair.

Here’s my take. The Occupy Wall Street movement, in all its different iterations across the country, is seen as a massively political event. Even though, at its core, the movement is about both parties colluding with powerful interests to keep the rich up and the poor down, people see it through the traditional left-right lens. While I don’t see it that way, many do. In terms of the media’s role in that, journalists are never going to come out correctly in that debate. Additionally, the main stream media is generally seen as part of the system that prevents the little guy from rocking the boat too much, so some people would never say the media could be fair about this.

I actually got a few interesting comments on this, and I’ll post them below. If you think I’m missing the point on all of this, feel free to set me straight in the comment section.

Michelle, from Colorado:

I must say, I didn’t like the options too much because I think a lot of the coverage “fair/unfair” depends on your source of information. I believe the coverage is fair (although far too much, considering the low numbers of people actually taking part in comparison to population size in some of the “occupy” cities.

Trish, in Arizona:

The coverage started off slow, but has gotten better as the movement has shown some staying power.

Aaron, from I have no clue where:

I think people give Veitnam protesters too much credit. I think they were shitbags.

And Sue, also from I have no idea where:

Seems to be an attempt to put a positive spin on the activities going on, with little coverage of how this is affecting small businesses,children trying to get to school,illegal activities going on in the camps, etc.

Again, diverse ideas on a wildly touchy subject. Journalists trying to do the right thing will hardly ever be seen as fair under these conditions.

(featured photo by: Long Island Rose via Flickr)

(featured photo by: Long Island Rose via Flickr)

The New York Times reports that China’s General Administration of Press and Publication released a new set of guidelines for the nation’s journalists and bloggers. The regulations ban using unverified information from the Internet or phone messages in articles. Additionally, journalists must also include at least two sources for news reports that are critical of the state, and that they must conduct interviews in person when gathering the information (the full article is well worth the read, so please click through and check it out).

 The authorities appear particularly concerned about fast-spreading rumors of corruption or abuse of authority by government officials, a frequent topic on the Twitter-like microblogs.

Can you imagine having to conduct all interviews in person? Or having to rely on the government to tell you what constitutes rumor versus legitimate story?

I complain a lot about the American press system, and certainly things aren’t perfect, but regulations like these are so antithetical to what a free press is supposed to do. Obviously, China doesn’t have a free press -despite the efforts of many incredibly brave writers – but still. While things could always be better, think about what writers and other journalists and bloggers have to go through in China before you complain about your situation in the U.S.

That’s according to the latest Pew Research Center Poll, which attempted to gauge how much people know about recent headlines based on written and visual question:

On 13 of the 19 questions, Republicans score significantly higher than Democrats and there are no questions on which Democrats did better than Republicans.

Questions ranged from identifying Ben Bernanke and his role to picking out the country of Israel on a map on the survey that was conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 11 over the web among 1,168 adults aged 18 and older.

It’s fun to wonder who couldn’t identify what the Republican Party logo is (really?), but we all know that survey results – especially web surveys – aren’t all that reliable. The question should be: How do we engage as many audiences as possible, regardless of political affiliation, education level or age?

I’m going to open this up to the thousands of readers who visit this site every day. What should the media be doing differently to make sure most people are armed with at least the basic facts about the world around them? How should journalists try to tailor information to different groups, if at all?

I’ll re-post this one week from now and list the best comments.