Three years after the federal government ended subsistence guarantees for low-income people–and after hundreds of thousands of people have left or been kicked off the benefit rolls–welfare is no longer considered newsworthy. And the people, the vast majority of them children, whose lives have been irrevocably altered by benefit cut-offs simply aren’t worthy of public attention. That’s the conclusion that emerged from an exhaustive five-month study of welfare coverage in five major California newspapers. Media Alliance and media advocacy organization We Interrupt This Message surveyed the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee, San Jose Mercury News, and Contra Costa Times from January 1 through May 31 of this year, analyzing all stories containing the word welfare in either the headline or subhead. We wanted to know how mainstream papers have approached the issue, and what this coverage has contributed to public perceptions and policy. Continue reading WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH WELFARE REFORM?, by Camille Taiara→
California has the most populous death row in America with some 517 inmates. Texas leads the nation in executions with 92 since 1976. Nationwide approximately 3,500 condemned men and women are currently waiting to die. According to Bureau of Justice statistics, this country executed 74 inmates in 1997, the most recent year for which data is available. Since the states began killing again in 1977, more than 460 men and women have been put to death. In the past few years Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess and his students have helped liberate three wrongfully convicted condemned men through two class projects in investigative reporting (their work wasn’t published but was covered by the press and used by the defense lawyers). Inspired by those successes, MediaFile asked a prominent local defense investigator for tips on digging into death-row cases. Because of concerns about compromising his investigations, he asked to remain anonymous for this interview. Investigator X has been battling capital punishment for two decades on numerous fronts. The longtime Oakland resident has penned essays detailing the arbitrary and racist nature of the death penalty for The New York Times, San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles Times, and numerous other publications. He has spearheaded activist campaigns against state killing and the prison-industrial complex. He has witnessed one of California’s six contemporary executions. And for the past nine years, Investigator X has traveled the nation and the globe digging up exculpatory evidence for the defense of condemned prisoners. Continue reading TIPS FROM A PRO ON INVESTIGATING DEATH ROW CASES, by A. Clay Thompson→
Over the past decade, an outspoken brand of iconoclastic journalism has emerged from the harsh experiences of people living on the streets in dozens of cities in the United States, Canada, and Europe. This dissident press of the poor has created a radical alternative to the values and biases of mainstream journalism at the very moment when poor people and those who challenge the status quo are largely shut out of the major media. Continue reading DISSENTING VOICES OF THE STREET, by Terry Messman→
Unlike commercial businesses, nonprofit organizations tend to operate at the edge of the public eye. There are no commercials or product announcements, and few publicists. Many nonprofits work on shoestring budgets to provide some sort of community.service and do not expect to make money. In exchange, California nonprofits do not have to pay federal or state income taxes. But sometimes creative means of makings ends meet can go awry. Whether a nonprofit’s mission and guidelines have fallen by the wayside or a financially successful organization proves too strong a temptation for some high-ranking employee, there are times when reporters will want to look behind the do-gooder façade of a nonprofit and examine its operations and finances. Continue reading REPORTER’S FILE: Using Tax Returns to Investigate Nonprofit Organizations, by Mónica L. López→
Picking the top ten anything is a pretty daunting task, and selecting ten top media movies proved to be more of a challenge than I was expecting. I’m no Pauline Kael, only a humble media worker and Media Alliance board member, and off the top of my head, I could only come up with about four movies. I ended up polling journalists, friends, movie buffs, and the aggressively opinionated for suggestions. This got me a list of about 50 recommendations, ranging from illuminating to bizarre. I happily shuffled off to my local video store and indiscriminately selected movies from my master list. At first it was an unfamiliar thrill to go into a video store and not agonize for an eternity before selecting a flick. But after a few weeks my eyes began to bug out, my roommate’s VCR started to smoke, and late fees began to seriously eat into my burrito budget. Continue reading TOP 10: BEST MOVIES ABOUT MEDIA, by MiHi Ahn→
High school students continue to find that their First Amendment rights are invisible to school administrators, despite years of struggle against censorship. In the ’60s, students at some schools published underground papers because their school-run papers were so heavily censored. In the ’70s and ’80s, a consensus grew that First Amendment protections extended to the official student press, and school newspapers were allowed to tackle controversial topics. But high school journalists found this freedom short-lived. In a 1988 case involving Hazelwood East High School near St. Louis, where student journalists wanted to publish stories on teenage pregnancy and divorce in the school newspaper, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled five to three that principals have the right to censor school papers. The majority opinion said that school-sponsored newspapers and similar activities are not intended as a public forum for student views, but are part of the curriculum and therefore subject to official control to ensure that they meet program purposes. After announcing the decision, Justice Byron R. White added that a school need not tolerate student speech that is incongruous with the educational goals of the institution–although the government could not censor similar speech outside school grounds. Continue reading STUDENTS STRUGGLE AGAINST CENSORSHIP, by Lian Cheun→
