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[The St. Petersburg Times in Russia appears to have stopped publishing new articles since January 2015] Russian Businessman Buys 'Leviathan' Skeleton for Moscow Lawn The St. Petersburg Times Published: January 31, 2015 (Issue # 1844) Translation Is New Weapon in Propaganda War By Michele A. Berdy The St. Petersburg Times Published: January 31, 2015 (Issue # 1844) Russians Say They Fear Hunger, Unemployment and Nuclear War By Anna Dolgov The St. Petersburg Times Published: January 31, 2015 (Issue # 1844)

Traditional media has been on a downward slide for some time now, with cutbacks taking place in newsrooms at papers, magazines and cable television outlets. This makes for a tighter job market for those following the traditional J-school path and that new reality seems to be setting in at Columbia. One of the oldest journalism schools in the nation is downsizing. Columbia UniversityÂ’s Graduate School of Journalism will reduce its class size and cut about six positions from its staff as the news industry retrenches.The school will gradually reduce enrollment over several years and has already stopped filling some...

Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism will reduce its class size and cut about six positions from its staff as the news industry retrenches. The school will gradually reduce enrollment over several years and has already stopped filling some vacant faculty positions, Steve Coll, dean of the school since 2013, said in an e-mail to students, faculty and staff today.

There’s a new owner and a new approach to the news at WJLA-TV, Washington’s ABC affiliate. Under the direction of its ambitious corporate parent, the station’s news operations have taken a subtle but noticeable turn to the right. Last week, for example, WJLA viewers woke up to a new face on the morning news: Mark Hyman, a veteran conservative pundit, who offered some criticism of President Obama. .... a regular feature on WJLA, just as they are on dozens of stations owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the new owner of ABC 7. The Hunt Valley, Md.-based company in July...

U.S. stocks pulled back Tuesday, retreating from all-time highs and the psychologically significant 5,000 level for the Nasdaq Composite reached during the previous session. In the absence of major economic reports, investors turned their attention to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to U.S. Congress. Netanyahu criticized the White House’s attempts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, saying it was a “bad deal.” The speech reminded investors of potential geopolitical risks abroad. But indexes have since come off their lows.

In Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times, President Obama previewed his address on violent extremism by saying that, “Our campaign to prevent people around the world from being radicalized to violence is ultimately a battle for hearts and minds.”President Obama could not be more correct in this statement.However, he also nearly half the world’s countries, intellectuals, journalists, and bloggers face a constant threat of punishment if their works are deemed blasphemous or insulting to religions or moral standards. In some nations where blasphemy and apostasy laws are taken most seriously such as Pakistan and Iran, these crimes carry extreme penalties like lifetime...

Truth-Telling and the News Media from Lee Webb Feb 13, 2015 Category: Articles NBC announced Tuesday that it suspended its lead news anchor Brian Williams for six months without pay. Network brass concluded that Williams embellished his experiences covering stories over the years; most notably that he was in a U.S. Army helicopter that was hit by enemy fire during the Iraq War in 2003.I’ve taken more than a passing interest in the story since I share a couple of things in common with Mr. Williams. First, before coming to Ligonier Ministries, I spent nineteen years in a position similar to his,...

If Brian Williams, the anchor and face of NBC News, goes, others should march right out the door behind him. Williams, in 2003, filed a report about his experiences in Iraq. He accurately reported that a helicopter an hour in front of his took fire from an RPG. But over the years the story morphed into Williams claiming that his helicopter took an incoming RPG and other small arms fire. Other stories Williams told and filed are under review, including apparently exaggerated or false claims filed or stated during Hurricane Katrina. Williams claimed he saw a dead body floating in...

FOX News Channel ranked number one in all of cable in both Total Day as well as in early primetime (7-11PM) viewers last week. This represents the first time FOX News Channel has topped both metrics since 2013. Meanwhile, both CNN and MSNBC didn't crack the top 20 in either metric. See below for more: CABLE NEWS RANKINGS Total Day FNC - #1 CNN - #21 MSNBC - #31 7-11PM Primetime FNC - #1 MSNBC - #27 CNN - #30 8-11PM Primetime FNC - #2 MSNBC - #28 CNN - #31

Brian Williams’ inability to recall and truthfully report the events concerning his helicopter coming under fire in Iraq single-handedly calls into question the lack of journalistic integrity among today’s American journalists and taints the entire field of journalism. While numerous instances of reporting fallacies, including the unraveling of the Rolling Stones UVA rape story, have recently flooded social media timelines and dominated newscasts, none delivers a stronger punch to the gut than when the poster boy of American journalism is found to be no more than a highly paid liar. In 2014, a Gallup poll showed Americans’ trust in mass...

THE BASIC PROBLEM OF DEMOCRACYWHAT MODERN LIBERTY MEANS BY WALTER LIPPMANN FROM our recent experience it is clear that the traditional liberties of speech and opinion rest on no solid foundation. At a time when the world needs above all other things the activity of generous imaginations and the creative leadership of planning and inventive minds, our thinking is shriveled with panic. Time and energy that should go to building and restoring are instead consumed in warding off the pin-pricks of prejudice and fighting a guerilla war against misunderstanding and intolerance. For suppression is felt, not simply by the scattered...

Brian Williams began his recent lecture in NYU’s ournalism department on a harsh note. “It doesn’t matter what you look like, it doesn’t matter who you know. If you can’t write that lead, then get out,” Williams said. But Williams, who visited NYU on April 4, 2007, quickly softened the blow of this severe pronouncement — he admitted to students that his own broadcasting career had gotten off to a difficult start in Pittsburg, Kansas. “I was making $174 a week, and I bombed out after 13 months because I sucked,” Williams said. He left Kansas for Washington, D.C., where...

We in America have a problem with media bias. Who or where does it come from? What did those people say, write, or do? Did it evolve by multiple steps, or by one step? When did the use of narrative get introduced? In an attempt to answer some of these questions and others, the result is a paper that I have recently written, here. I put it up online for all to read and examine, and I hope there will be those who will take the time to follow the footnotes back and read the original source material. These are...

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Say conservatives have their way with Obamacare, and the Supreme Court deals it a death blow or a Republican president repeals it in 2017. Some people who got health insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act may lose it. In which case, liberals like to say, some of Obamacare’s beneficiaries may die. Columnist Jonathan Chait wrote recently that those who may die are victims of ideology — “collateral damage” incurred in conservatives’ pursuit “of a larger goal.” If these are the stakes, many liberals argue, then ending Obamacare is immoral. Except, it’s not. In a world of scarce...

Earlier this month, a reporter asked the question that usually comes up when the United States gets involved in a sustained military campaign. Just how many enemy troops — in this case, Islamic State foot soldiers — have U.S. forces killed in more than five months of aerial attacks? The military’s answer was basically the same given to all similar questions going back more than a decade. Counting the dead is “not the goal,” said Pentagon chief spokesman John Kirby, a Navy admiral. Since the Vietnam War, with its gruesome and inflated U.S. tallies of enemy dead, the Pentagon has...

Unusual, not because it’s rare to see an American journalist bowing to Islamic sensibilities on depictions of Mohammed but because typically they don’t go so far as to demand legal limits on their own profession. When the New York Times refuses to run a cartoon goofing on Islam, they don’t want the reason to be government censorship. They prefer to be censored by more sympathetic agents, like violent Muslim radicals.To be precise here, though, DeWayne Wickham, the dean of Morgan State’s J-school, isn’t demanding a “Mohammed exception” to the First Amendment. He’s demanding an exception for all speech that...

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris prompted millions to take to the streets to show national solidarity and to pay tribute to the 17 people murdered. The attacks have also inspired a lot of soul-searching, as the French struggle to understand how three men, born and raised in France, could have trained the murderous intent of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State on their own countrymen. Prison was the crucible of their radicalization. There are five million to six million Muslims in France, less than 10 percent of the total population, but 60 percent of France’s prison inmates are of...

VIRGINIA — A bill introduced in the Virginia General Assembly on Wednesday could limit high school student journalists’ ability to survey their classmates. The bill, which Del. Tony Wilt introduced, would require parents to approve any surveys asking students to provide “sexual information,” mental health information, medical information, student health risk information, information about drug use and other topics the school board deems “sensitive.” “If anyone is giving the students a survey of that nature, an attempt has to be made to notify the parents,” said Wilt, a Republican. Kelly Furnas, the executive director of the Journalism Education Association, said...

Phi Psi members, speaking publicly for the first time since the allegations surfaced, told The Washington Post that they went into hiding for weeks after their home was vandalized with spray-painted messages calling them rapists and with bricks thrown through windows. They booked hotel rooms to avoid the swarm of protesters on their front lawn. They watched as their brotherhood was vilified, coming to symbolize the worst episode of collegiate sexual violence against women since the 2006 Duke University lacrosse team scandal — which also turned out to be false. Although the Rolling Stone article was discredited and the student’s...