Fall 1998

Serving the Poor

“I think a strong argument can be made that the residents of [poorer] areas are severely disadvantaged—as citizens, as workers, as consumers—by the lack of serious coverage from television and the lack of local coverage of their neighborhoods by newspapers,” said Maxwell King former Editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer. The reason, of course, is that the media, regardless of their claims of serving all the people, aim for the affluent, the audience that advertisers seek. It would seem, then, that if newspapers want to expand readership they would be worried about the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

Serving the Poor
Introduction
By Robert H. Phelps, Editor
Widening Gap Between Haves and Have-Nots
By Michael Kirkhorn
How to Make Poverty Disappear (3 comments)
By F. Allan Hanson
Radical Right ‘Bust’ Feared From Poverty
By Will Campbell
First Amendment
SLAPPing Down the Debate Over Cuba
Right-Wing Exile Foundation in Florida Uses Defamation Suits To Chill Criticism of Its Policies
By John S. Nichols and Robert D. Richards
TV and the End Of Reflection
By Brent Staples
SLAPP and Black Hole of Internet
By James C. Goodale
Watchdog Journalism
Introduction
By Robert H. Phelps, Editor
Arrogance Wins? American Journalism’s Identity Crisis
By Murrey Marder
Civility as a Reporting Tool
By Will Englund
In Britain, Rottweilers Attack
By Jenny Lo
Ideas for Watchdog Reporting
By Bill Kovach
1. National Security
2. State and Local Government
3. Economics
4. Nonprofit Organizations
The Journalist’s Trade
Shangri-La Is No Heaven
A Day with the White House Traveling Press Corps in Beijing
By Philip Cunningham
White House Redfines Tiananmen Square
By Philip Cunningham
‘No Chicanos on TV’
I think that I shall never see any Chicanos on TV*
By Cecilia Alvear
Foreign Correspondence
Indonesian Media Still Censoring Itself
By Ratih Hardjono
Curator's Corner
Storytelling vs. Truth Telling
By Bill Kovach
Letters to the Editor
Newspaper-Tobacco ‘Unholy Alliance’
Full Quotation on Newsroom Ethics
Technology
The Triumph Of Text
By Tom Regan
Books
A Bit of Hope on Education Coverage, a Mea Culpa
By Evans Clinchy
Pioneer in Coverage of Racial Injustice
By Phillip W.D. Martin
Do Concessions Protect First Amendment?
By Robert H. Phelps
Scorned Tabloid Lover Bares His Bitterness
By Ying Chan
Verifying Truth in Data Deluge
Responsibility to Be Honest
By Lois Fiore
How Civility Can Guide Media in a Democracy
By Molly Marsh
A Reader’s View: Novelists Outdo Journalists
By Murray Marder
Nieman Notes
Muckraking in Philippines
By Rigoberto Tiglao