Free Republic

Below is my column in the New York Post on the Associated Press guideline for reporters to avoid calling Hamas a terrorist organization. Voice of America and other media outlets have made the same decision. This is not about supporting the Palestinian cause. It is about correctly describing a group that commits terrorist attacks as a terrorist organization. Here is the column: Confucius once said that “the beginning of wisdom is the ability to call things by their right names.” That does not appear to be the approach of the Associated Press this week after the media organization told its...

We previously discussed the movement in journalism schools to get rid of principles of objectivity in journalism. Advocacy journalism is the new touchstone in the media even as polls show that trust in the media is plummeting. Now, former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward have released the results of their interviews with over 75 media leaders and concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.” Notably, while Bob Woodword and others...

The Washington Post’s Web site was disrupted Thursday morning by a hacker group sympathetic to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that apparently launched a coordinated wave of attacks on American news outlets. A group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army briefly infiltrated The Post’s Web site and redirected readers of some stories to the SEA’s site. The organization supports Assad, who has led a long, bloody campaign to crush a rebellion in Syria. The intrusion lasted for about 30 minutes and affected a number of foreign-news stories. “We’ve taken defensive measures, and at this time there are no other issues affecting...