“My Pillow” guy loses election fraud libel lawsuit, but some conservative media won’t tell you
June 16, 2025 – Mike Lindell, the “My Pillow” guy, lost a $2.3 million libel lawsuit filed by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer. You can learn more about this case on the right-wing news site Brietbart, which used a UPI story that said that “Lindell claimed — without any evidence — that Coomer […]
AI goes out of its way to be wrong, so don’t trust it yet
By Howie Boxley Rachel Pollack, a renowned author, artist, and tarot expert, passed away on April 7, 2023, at the age of 75. Pollack’s death was confirmed by her publisher, Llewellyn Worldwide, who stated that she had died peacefully at her home in the Hudson Valley, New York. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1948, […]
West Virginia Public Broadcasting hasn’t published news about political interference at West Virginia Public Broadcasting
By Chris Roberts National Public Radio’s David Folkenflick reported today (Monday, Feb. 13, 2023) about politicians interfering with journalism at West Virginia Public Broadcasting. The organization last year dismissed a part-time reporter for several stories alleging that state-run facilities abused people with disabilities. The reporting clearly angered politicians in the state, who claimed her work […]
Donald Trump and his lawyers fined $1 million for ‘revenge’ lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, but you wouldn’t know that by only reading FoxNews.com
By Chris Roberts It’s news when a former president sues his opponent, and in March 2022 news organizations such as FoxNews.com placed at the top of their website the news that Donald Trump filed a $100 million lawsuit claiming that his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, were among those part of a conspiracy “to create a […]
CBS News ethically correct in holding its scoop on Brittney Griner release from Russia
CBS News knew a week before other journalists knew that WNBA player Brittney Griner was to be released from a Russian jail, but it held the scoop until she was safe. We’ll leave to others the politics and concerns about trading a basketball player with two cannabis oil vape pens for a Russian weapons smuggler, […]
Yes, free speech is not consequence-free
By Chris Roberts It’s hard to think that $1 billion will actually ever be paid to victims of Alex Jones’ libelous speech about the parents whose children died in mass shootings, but it’s easy to recognize that our First Amendment right to free speech does not mean speech has no consequences. Here’s the FoxNews.com story […]
When looking at journalism ethics winners, consider the public relations losers
By Chris Roberts The Society of Professional Journalists announced the winners of its annual Ethics in Journalism awards on Sept. 22, 2022. They are: ►Hannah Dreyfus of ProPublica, whose project The Liberty Way showed how Liberty University dealt with students who reported rape. ►Josh Renaud of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, whose reporting revealed that a […]
Define your terms, or the propagandists win
Iowa State’s Michael Bugeja makes a strong point in a Poynter Institute column (June 30, 2022) about how some Republican candidates use the term “RINO” — Republican in Name Only” — to describe other Republicans who show “apparent disloyalty to Trump as GOP kingmaker.” His commentary includes Republican Jim Jones, who in 2021 provided a […]
How should news organizations respond to non-responsive responses for comment?
Ethical news organizations follow the tenet in the Society of Professional Journalist’s code of ethics that says good journalists “[d]iligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.” More and more of those subjects don’t actually answer the questions, however. Companies, politicians, and others often respond to […]