MMMM # 521 ---Healthy (NOT) News Decisions. And The Reporter Who Wasn't..

   

       This week's On The Media should be required listening for reporters and news producers who deal with health news.
     The decision to publish or broadcast a "health story" should be carefully made. It is always tempting to characterize health stores as "good news" or "bad news", yet that's relative. Unless the reporter/producer is endorsing medical advice---never a good idea---it should be left to the news consumer to determine how the news impacts them---if it actually does?
     And that's especially true if the story is going against established medical findings. There is a scam out there every day waiting to attract the eyes of the people who report the news.

###

    

      A website called The Good Men Project calls out a Chicago TV reporter for questionable reporting in the case of a young black man shot and killed by a white cop. A columnist on the site writes the reporter...

 ...isn’t a good journalist in my opinion, thus he choose to ignore the aforementioned news items which are of great public interest not just to Chicagoans, but Americans at large, in order to peruse Mr. McDonald’s juvenile record and broadcast his findings—among which were that Mr. McDonald was sexually abused at age four – on Twitter, hoping to find an audience.

      If this were  a sex crime story, perhaps the previous abuse of a victim might be of note, but why in this story? And since when it is OK to name a juvenile victim of sex abuse, even after death?

###

A lengthy report at he liberal ThinkProgress website appears under this headline:

Edward Clarkin Is The Most Important Man In Journalism Today — And He’s Probably Not A Real Person

      Anyone interested in Journalism should read it. 

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a longstanding regular feature of www.TimLennox.com]