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Thoughts on journalism and democracy
For the next couple of days I’ll be kicking around ideas about journalism and democracy. Here are some borrowed thoughts for starters (and, no, I don’t agree with each and every one): Reading newspapers, and perhaps writing to them, public meetings, and solicitations of different sorts addressed to the political authorities, are the extent of…
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Will democracy collapse without journalism to provide political information?
It’s a question that tends to assume there’s only one answer – yes. Journalism is both an information source and a watchdog. Without it, democracy would seize up. So is it true? I think the answer might actually be – no. And the reason has more to do with our democracy than with our journalism.…
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How to be lawfully killed
Boarding a tube train whilst Brazilian hasn’t yet been established as sufficient reason to be lawfully killed, but Sir Michael Wright, the coroner in charge of the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, has at least ruled that shooting dead a passenger going about their every day business on public transport is…
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‘Creative’ Economics vs. Journalism and the Public Trust
I fully expect that most television journalists will not have dived into a copy of Switching Channels: Organization and Change in TV Broadcasting by Richard E. Caves. Freakonomics it is not. But Caves is the guy (ok, Nathaniel Ropes Research Professor of Political Economy at Harvard) who suggested something that may be appealing to journalists…