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It is not every day that a politician chooses to use the closing days of a hotly contested, and exceedingly high-stakes, election to give voters bad news. Yet, in Pennsylvania, the incumbent senator, Rick Santorum, is courageously doing just that.
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Changes to local authorities in England, seeking to give people more power, have been unveiled by the government. Which laws would you pass?
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Tax on alcohol should be increased tackle binge drinking among young people, the health secretary says.
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Should modern Britain be a more secular society? Send us your thoughts on the continuing religion debate.
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Police chiefs have urged the government to criminalise flag-burning. Send us your comments.
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Australia's top Muslim cleric is barred from preaching after comparing immodestly dressed women to "uncovered meat". Send us your views.
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The Stern Review concludes that we should spend 1% of GDP now to avoid a 20% drop due environmental catastrophe. Send us your views.
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What would you like discussed at the first global Internet Governance Forum in Athens?
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Does the amount of work you put in to your degree depend on where and what you study? Send us your experiences
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Trick or treaters will be out on the streets tonight as people mark the festival. Are you doing something special - or do you hate the event?
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A summit to discuss the global impact of online gambling is taking place in the UK today. Should we be concerned?
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An inquiry into the Iraq war could endanger British troops there, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has warned. Send your views.
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by Greg Beato Back in the Dial-Up Ages, when the megabytes flowed like Mogen-David at a George Allen seder, even a 20-page educational technology plan white-paper was a less excruciating campaign tool than a 28.8 Kbps attack ad. Aspiring revolutionaries...
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A conservative blog is claiming that "Democrats" planted a "forged" RNC anti-Harold Ford ad specifically to gin up allegations of racism. What's the phrase again? "Interesting, if true"? (Not entirely SFW, btw...) You have to hear the boom-changa-changa porn soundtrack...
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by Ana Marie Cox How long is "an eternity in politics"? According to news coverage of these midterms, it's anywhere from "five weeks" to "overnight" with stops along the way at "thirty days," "thirteen days" and "a week." Most of...
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The President, The Vice President and Karl Rove are all over the airwaves predicting that, against the apparent odds, the GOP will keep both houses of Congress next Tuesday. White House officials say this is not just cheerleading -- that...
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(CBS)Yesterday on the "Evening News," anchor Katie Couric interviewed actor and activist Michael J. Fox. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, has been in the spotlight over an ad in which he lauds Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill and criticizes McCaskill opponent Jim Talent over their positions on stem cell research. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has suggested that Fox, whose body was rocking from side to side during the ad, was "either off his medication or acting" when he filmed the spot. After her interview with Fox, Couric said the following: "By the way, in the spirit of full disclosure, I think it's important to mention that my dad has Parkinson's disease. He told me today it's okay to tell you that. And in the past, I've made contributions for Parkinson's research through Michael J. Fox's foundation." I asked Couric about the disclosure. "The reason I donated to his foundation is because of my father. It was a combination of my admiration for Michael and my personal experience with my dad," she said. Couric said she had introduced people at events for Fox's foundation in the past, and she didn't want people to suggest she was trying to hide her connection to him. Did her personal experience with Parkinson's influence the way that she conducted the interview or framed the story? "I don't feel like it really reflected or influenced my approach," said Couric. "I think I probably have even more sympathy for his situation, and I think I understand the science better than some other people," she said. "But I challenged him on questions people who support stem cell research would not necessarily want asked" - such as ethical "slippery slope" questions inherent in embryonic stem cell research and the notion that such research could conceivably be done exclusively in the private sector. Couric also said she "wanted to be responsible to Rush Limbaugh's true feelings." She said many news outlets only excerpted the most incendiary clip of Limbaugh's comments, and that it was important to provide a full accounting of his views. During the interview with Fox, Couric read a comment that Limbaugh made directly to the "Evening News."
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(CBS/AP)Before stories like the CIA leak investigation were splashed across the front pages of newspapers, we didn"t hear much about government investigations into leaks to the media. These days, however, we hear quite a bit about them. In the latest example, The Washington Post today notes a recent request by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee for a "sweeping inquiry into the possible leak of a classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq by a staff member, including and audit of staff telephone records and e-mail to identify unauthorized contacts with news media or messages related to the leaked document." I spoke to National Security Correspondent David Martin about the effect such investigations have on reporting from the Pentagon. "Most of the time when there"s a leak," said Martin, "whatever recriminations that are made within the government are made privately. It rarely gets to be subject of a story. What has really changed with the Bush administration is that these leak investigations are now spread exhaustively on the public record." Martin cited the Valerie Plame case, the government"s investigation into the leaking of the NSA eavesdropping story to the New York Times, and the CIA"s investigation of leaks to the Washington Post about secret prisons. What"s particularly interesting about the potential House Intelligence investigation, said Martin, is that the information about the NIE that was disclosed to the New York Times was, within days, declassified by the government. "The government decided that it wouldn"t harm national security so they declassified it. So the harm there [for the leaker] was in deciding on his or her own to put it out." For the most part, said Martin, the disclosure of most classified information wouldn"t necessarily pose a threat to national security. Often, it"s just that no one has bothered to declassify it. The threat of disclosure instead may be political, said Martin. "Either it"s counter to the message - like the NIE, which was counter to the message that the Iraq war was making us safer." The other possibility is that leaked information limits the government"s "freedom of action," said Martin. "If [as a reporter] you don"t know something is going on, then you"re not asking them questions about it. Then they can take their time and make decisions without any outside pressure." "Obviously we want full, real-time information and they want to reveal partial information with a significant time delay."
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(Getty Images/Jim Watson)Did you know political operatives have legacies? I didn"t. I thought presidents and statesmen and stateswomen had legacies, not consultants. Now I know I was misguided thanks to a front page story in The Washington Post headlined,"Midterm Vote May Define Rove"s Legacy." Good to know that the hometown paper of politics and government is keeping its eye on the prize the week before the election. Real insiders know aides are more important than principals, and priniciples. Not to be thoroughly snarky, I will say that the Post"s Sunday Outlook section had an interesting, candid piece called "Where We went Wrong" by former Republican majority Leader Dick Armey. "Republican lawmakers forgot the party's principles, became enamored with power and position, and began putting politics over policy," Armey wrote. "Now, the Democrats are reaping the rewards of our neglect -- and we have no one to blame but ourselves."
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We may have retired our "What Was Andy Thinking" feature, but Mr. Rooney continues to hold our interest. On last night's "60 Minutes," Rooney delivered what was perhaps the Platonic ideal of a Rooney segment. Click the box to watch - you won't regret it. You can also check out the excerpt below, which we submit encapsulates Rooney at his most delightfully Rooneyesque: "Downtown has gone out of style in a lot of American cities. It's moved to the outskirts of town. I've been to Des Moines, Iowa several times. I don"t know why they put "Des" in front of 'Moines.' They call it 'DE MOINES.' 'Moines' means 'monks' in French. A lot of interesting city names begin with T. Tacoma, Tucson, Tulsa, Tuscaloosa, Terre Haute, Toledo, Topeka. I only like to go to cities I've been to before so I'll probably never get to Fargo, North Dakota." One side note from last night's segment: At one point, Rooney said that he didn't know Pittsburgh is "on an island, like New York City." As it turns out, that's not exactly true - as you can see from this map, while the city is surrounded by rivers on three sides, it's no island.
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(CBS)Correspondent Jim Stewart, who has been a journalist for 37 years (more than 16 of them at CBS News) announced his retirement from CBS News last month. As we said then, and we"ll say again, he"s long been a friend to Public Eye. He was again kind enough to sit down with me on his last day in the office on Friday to reflect a bit on his time at CBS News. Tune in on Thursday for more from Jim, when he"ll be featured as this week"s "10 Plus 1" subject. What will you miss the most about this job, what will you miss the least?That"s easy to answer. I mean, I will miss people the most. It's not about the stories, it"s about the people. I learned after switching from newspapers to broadcast journalism that this job is much harder to do. You can travel with a certain anonymity as a print reporter, with your pencil and your notepad and a quizzical look on your face. [In television news] sometimes you drag along two-ton trucks, antennas, camera crews, producers, bright lights and televisions. It"s hard to get spontaneity. It"s hard to get past the veneer that people now automatically put up when they think they're "on TV." It"s also much more deadline-driven. What I will not miss is this splintering of our profession that, I think, has demeaned it. There was a time when you could go to the magazine section of your drugstore and choose from 20 different publications. I honestly think that now you can probably find 20 different publications on just the game of golf. There was a time when you had three television channels to choose from and I was stunned to find out I now receive 338. I'm not sure we're well served by that many voices. I'm not looking for a state-run television system. I'm not looking for one network to dominate all others. But you do lose quality when you disperse the talent and the different viewpoints across such a broad spectrum. Why do you think you've been able to develop the sources you have over the period of time you've been a journalist?
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(CBS)Starting November 1, you can get a glimpse of Public Eye right in your in-box, so sign up now. Keep up with all the behind-the-scenes happenings at CBS News and the issues impacting the media at large. Get insights on the hot topics of the day and catch up on some PE highlights you might have missed. Receive the daily update by signing up here. Don't be the last on your block to register for the Public Eye newsletter!
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(CBS/AP)We hear so much about bias in the media that it"s easy to forget advocacy journalism once was the norm in America. As the Wall Street Journal"s Cynthia Crossen reminds us today, early American newspapers were anything but "impartial." Crossen notes the economic forces that drove both the advocacy model and the trend toward serving a broader public in a way that makes sense. And it made me wonder - in today"s polarized environment where one can so easily choose sources of information, is the biased model making a real comeback? Here"s Crossen: Early American newspaper publishers scoffed at the idea that they should hide their political prejudices under a cloak of objectivity. "To profess impartiality here," wrote William Cobbett in his Federalist newspaper, Porcupine's Gazette, "would be as absurd as to profess it in a war between virtue and vice, good and evil, happiness and misery." The motto of the Gazette of the United States, which began publication in 1789, was "He that is not for us is against us." And a New Jersey printer wrote in 1798, "The times demand decision; there is a right and a wrong, and the printer, who under the specious name of impartiality jumbles both truth and falsehood into the same paper, is either doubtful of his own judgment or is governed by ulterior motives." If ulterior motives played a part, however, it was to encourage early newspaper publishers to become deeply entrenched in politics. Circulation and advertising revenue couldn't support a newspaper, but government jobs or printing contracts could. When the political candidates they supported were elected, loyal editors expected pork or patronage, and their journals became "virtual branches of the government," wrote Eric Burns, author of "Infamous Scribblers." The news pages -- there was no such thing as an editorial -- were unapologetically partisan, disdaining what Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune called "gagged, mincing neutrality." Indeed, editors who tried to remain relatively detached were mocked by their competitors. One newspaper, the National Intelligencer, whose editor, Samuel Smith, was deemed to be insufficiently combative, was dismissed as "Mr. Silky Milky Smith's National Smoothing Plane."Sounds a bit like a Keith Olbermann-Bill O"Reilly fight doesn"t it?
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(AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)Um, yeah. That"s what Reporters Without Borders" latest annual survey on press freedom throughout the world says, putting the U.S. on par with Botswana, Croatia and Tonga. That"s a nine point drop from its spot last year and a 36 point drop from its original position (17th) in the survey"s first year. Why the drop? RWB cites the contentious relationship between the media and the Bush administration, which "sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of 'national security" to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his 'war on terrorism."" That, and the "zeal of federal courts" for not passing a law that protects journalists from revealing their sources. The survey specifically mentions journalist/blogger Josh Wolf, jailed when he refused to provide footage of a political protest in California to a federal grand jury; Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj, who has been held at Guantanamo since 2002 without charges and AP photographer Bilal Hussein; who has been held in Iraq for six months with no charges. Who are the worst offenders? North Korea wins the grand prize. Following behind are Turkmenistan, Eritrea, Cuba, Burma and, as if we haven"t mentioned it enough on this Web site, China.
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(AP)It hasn"t yet become standard practice, but the trend of newspapers investigating and publishing rumors surrounding politicians does appear to be growing. The latest example surfaced in Ohio last week (hat tip: Romenesko) when the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a front-page story addressing unsubstantiated rumors making the rounds about gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland. Unlike a similar situation in Idaho, this story had a hint of a news peg, provided by Strickland"s opponent, Republican Ken Blackwell. During a recent debate, Blackwell brought up charges that Strickland had protected an associate accused of inappropriate behavior. As the Plain Dealer put it, Blackwell accused Strickland of "covering up for a campaign staff member who exposed himself to children and supporting the platform of NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association." According to the story, that accusation spread and grew in subsequent days, and, "in turn, Strickland, meeting with reporters and editors at the Cincinnati Enquirer, broke character and angrily asserted his heterosexuality." With a bit of a peg on which to hang the story, the Plain Dealer ran its story. And, while not everyone was comfortable with it, the realization is setting in that more and more, news outlets must address these kinds of topics. Plain Dealer ombudsman Ted Diadiun took up the issue in his Sunday column: Some people will say that's good -- that the paper's responsibility is to print the news and let readers decide what is believable. The argument has merit, but it stretches the definition of "news," and ignores our responsibility to confirm stories and to not publish things we know to be untrue.
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