What Founding Fathers Read

Founding Father’s Library

A list of the most read books in the libraries of key figures in the American Revolution and the founding of the American Republic.

Related Links:

• Essay: McDonald, Founding Fathers' Library

Related Links in the GSR:

• Names on the Walls

Related Links:

• Founding Fathers' Library
• School of Thought:Founding Fathers
• Topic: American Revolution & Constitution

The Most Commonly Read Books of the Founding Generation

The Founding Fathers of the American Constitution made it clear what authors and texts had influenced their own thinking on the idea of liberty.Goodrich Seminar Room list and a few more besides. Lutz's "top 40" texts (actually 37) by frequency of citation by the founding generation are listed below.

Another source of information about what books influenced the thinking of the American founding generation are the lists of recommended books they themselves drew up. Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson drew up a list of key texts in letters they wrote and, in the case of Jefferson, he actually donated his personal library (twice) to Congress to create the beginnings of what is now the Library of Congress and also drew up a catalog for the University of Virginia library.

The "Top 40" Authors cited by the Founding Generation (with links to material in the Online Library of Liberty)

1. St. Paul
2. Montesquieu
3. Sir William Blackstone
4. John Locke
5. David Hume
6. Plutarch
7. Cesare Beccaria
8. John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon
9. Delolme
10. Samuel Pufendorf
11. Sir Edward Coke
12. Cicero
13. Thomas Hobbes
14. William Robertson
15. Hugo Grotius
16. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
17. Lord Bolingbroke
18. Francis Bacon
19. Richard Price
20. William Shakespeare
21. Livy
22. Alexander Pope
23. John Milton
24. Tacitus
25. Plato
26. Abbe Guillaume Raynal
27. Abbe Gabriel Mably
28. Niccolo Machiavelli
29. Emmerich de Vattel
30. William Petyt
31. Voltaire
32. John Robinson
33. Algernon Sidney
34. John Somers
35. James Harrington
36. Paul de Rapin-Thoyras

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Texts They Read

St. Paul

Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

• Persian Letters (1734)
• Reflections on the Causes of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (1734)
• The Spirit of the Laws (1748)

Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780)

• Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69)

John Locke (1632-1704)

• An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690)
• The Two Treatises of Civil Government (1689)
• A Letter on Toleration An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690s)
• Some Consideraations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money (1691)
• On the Reasonableness of Christianity (1696)

David Hume (1711-1776)

• A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740)
• An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1751)
• Treatise: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751)
• Political Discourses (1752)
• History of England(1754-1762)
• The Natural History of Religion (1755)
• Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

Plutarch (c. 46-125)

• Roman Lives

Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794)

• An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1764)

John Trenchard (1662-1723) and Thomas Gordon (?-1750)

• Cato's Letters (1724)
• Trenchard and Walter Moyle (1672-1721), A Short History of Standing Armies iin England (1698)

Jean Louis Delolme (1740-1805)

• The Consitution of England (1771)

Samuel, Baron von Pufendorf (1632-1694)

• Elementa Jurisprudentiae universalis (1661)
• De jure naturae et gentium (1672)

Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634)

• Institutes of the Laws of England (1628-1644)

Cicero (106-43 BC)

• De Legibus
• De Officiis
• De Oratione
• De Republica

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

• Leviathan (1651)

William Robertson (1721-1793)

• History of Scotland (1759)
• History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V (1769)
• History of America (1777)

Hugo Grotius (1583-1645)

• On the Law of War and Peace (1625)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

• Discourse on the Origin of the Inequality of Men (1754)
• The Social Contract (1762)
• Emile (1762)

Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)

• The Freeholder's Political Catechism (1733)
• A Dissertation Upon Parties (1735)
• Remarks on the history of England (1743)
• The Idea of a Patriot King (1749)
• A Letter on the Spirit of Patriotism (1749)
• Letters on the Study and Use of History (1752)

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

• The Advancement of Learning (1605)
• Novum organum (1620)
• De argumentis scientarum (1623)
• Essays (1625)
• The New Atlantis (1627)

Richard Price (1723-1791)

• Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty (1776)
• Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution (1784)

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Titus Livius (Livy) (59BC - AD17)

• History of Rome

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

• The Dunciad (1728)
• Of False Taste (1731)
• Of the Uses of Riches (1732)
• An Essay on Man (1733-34)

John Milton (1608-1674)

• The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660)

Tacitus (c. 56-120)

• History of Germany
• The Histories

Coxe

Plato (c. 427-347 BC)

Abbe Guillaume Raynal (1713-1796)

• Philosophical and Political History of ... the East and West Indies (1770)

Abbe Gabriel Mably (1709-1785)

• Observations on the Romans (1740)
• Observations on the Government and Laws of the U.S. (1784)

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

• Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy (1531)
• The Prince (1532)

Emerich de Vattel (1714-1767)

• The Law of Nations (1759-1760)

William Petyt (1636-1707)

• The Antient Right of the Commons of England Asserted (1680)

Francois Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778)

• Letters on the English Nation (1733)
• Works (1751)
• General History and State of Europe (1756)

John Robinson (1575-1625)

Algernon Sidney (1622-1683)

• Discourses Concerning Government (1698)

John Somers (1651-1716)

• Vox populi, vox dei: Judgement of Kingdooms and Nations Concerning the Rights, Privileges, and Properties of the People (1709)

James Harrington (1611-1677)

• Oceana (1656)

Paul de Rapiin-Thoyras (1661-1725)

• History of England (1726-31)

What Journalists Do - In a Different Way. It's Not Fate. It's Editing

Stars of the original reality tv show, colour (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Reality TV has given rise to the idea of "winner edits" and "loser edits."Broadly speaking, they're the ways reality shows are structured so viewers are gently guided to the season's conclusion. There are myriad ways to set up a winner or a loser, but diehard reality fans are used to most of them by now. (Think, for instance, of the blowhard who needs to get his comeuppance, or the quiet person who lurks at the show's edges, always there for big moments but never central to them. The former is a classic loser edit, the latter a classic winner edit.)

This is from a Vox story on Project Greenlight.

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Very Quickly - Gutenberg

What it looked like.

Honesty and Ethics by Profession - Gallup Poll

George W. Bush (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A look at historical trends in Gallup survey. Nurses are at the top for 13th year in a row.

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A Famous Interview Using Unconventional Techniques. Ethical?

Portrait of Marlon Brando, "Streetcar Named Desire" 1 photographic print : gelatin silver. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Truman Capote , 1948 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The late Truman Capote interviewed the late Marlon Brando. CJR remembers.

The morning after the interview, Brando had little sense of the peril in which he had put himself. Logan, having caught wind of the session, quizzed Brando’s makeup man about it, learning that Brando had “enjoyed the evening immensely.” Later, over cocktails with Logan, Capote couldn’t help but crow. “Oh, you were so wrong about Marlon not being gossipy,” Capote told Logan, noting that Brando had talked about his mother’s drinking and other personal subjects. “I don’t believe it, Truman,” Logan responded. “You must be leaving something out. He just doesn’t reveal personal things.” Capote must have tricked him somehow, he said.

“I didn’t trick him,” Capote countered. “We simply swapped stories. I made up stories about what lushes my family were, and believe me, I made them lurid, until he began to feel sorry for me and told me his to make me feel better.” Capote would expand upon this technique to his biographer, Gerald Clarke. “The secret to the art of interviewing—and it is an art—is to let the other person think he’s interviewing you. . . . You tell him about yourself, and slowly you spin your web so that he tells you everything. That’s how I trapped Marlon.” In an interview with Rolling Stone more than 15 years after the fact, Capote observed, “You remember I told you how startled Marlon Brando was? I hadn’t taken a note. I hadn’t done a thing. I hadn’t even seemed to be interested.”

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Scenario: Betraying a Source in the Service of National Security

Typical organisational structure of a terrorist cell. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Greater Middle East (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You are an experienced reporter covering the Middle East. After cultivating key sources for months, you are able to make arrangements to interview a terrorist leader, one at the top of the U.S. list of most dangerous. You will meet your contact in a public place and then, blindfolded, be driven to a rendezvous with the terrorist leader.

The U.S. military somehow learns of this and asks you to have a state-of-the-art tracking device implanted in your buttock. They 'guarantee'  it cannot be detected by any device designed to uncover such trickery.

You will be tracked to the rendezvous. After your interview is over and you are clear, the military will swoop in and kill or subdue the terrorist leader. The military are confident you will never be in danger - or at least no more danger than you have placed yourself by undertaking such an interview in the first place.

Class assignment: What do you do and why, starting with your initial gut reaction?

Not as Dramatic as Our Bug in the Camera But Same Principle

English: Cameroonian journalists at a press conference with U.S. Ambassador R. Niels Marquardt in Yaoundé, 19 January 2006. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

from rsf website

JOURNALISTS ARE NOT INFORMANTS

PUBLISHED ON WEDNESDAY 29 OCTOBER 2014.

 Print Send français 

Two Cameroonian journalists face military court charges of failure to report a destabilization plot.

Journalists Felix Cyriaque Ebole Bola of the daily Mutations and Rodrigue Tongue of Le Messager, were charged following a 28 October military court hearing in Yaoundé with “non-denunciation” of facts potentially endangering state security. Baba Wamé, a former journalist and professor was accused of the same charges.

“This charge prompts great concern for freedom of information in Cameroon,” said Cléa Kahn-Sriber, head of the Africa desk of Reporters Without Borders. “Journalists should not become assets for state security agents. On the contrary, they must maintain their independence from government if they want to continue working as journalists. To demand that they become informants for government agencies is to destroy the essential quality of journalism. We ask the military court to drop these charges against the two journalists.”

Colleagues of the two journalists appeared in court to support them. They were ejected from the courtroom but gathered in front of the court to show their anger at the proceedings.

The two indicted journalists remain free under judiciary supervision. They must report to the court once a week, may not leave Yaoundé, and are barred from commenting about the case.

The matter began when Ebole Bola and Tongue learned of an Central African rebel chief stationed on the border of Cameroon claiming to be in possession of national security information. The editorial staff of Mutations told Reporters Without Borders that Ebole Bola wrote to the national security delegate informing him of this news and requesting confirmation. In response, the police asked the journalist to share information and to provide any updates he might gather in the future.

Communications ceased at that point. Then, Mutations was ordered to court for not having responded to the police request. But the journalist had never received an official subpoena. Can he be charged with not sharing information, when he was never asked to do so?

Xavier Messe, editor of Mutations, told RWB that the case poses grave worries for the status of journalists and their ability to protect sources. He said: “Cameroon faces a grave security situation. Attacks take place every day on the border with the Central African Republic. People are kidnapped. There are also security problems in the north caused by Boko Haram. The government holds that in these circumstances, journalists must cooperate...We are committed to being responsible. We receive information every day, but we don’t publish it all because some items could disrupt public peace and order. We follow that policy because we are committed to journalistic responsibility, above all in wartime. But journalists cannot be asked to become intelligence agents. If I had wanted to be a police officer, I would have chosen that profession. To each his own. Our credibility and our journalistic conscience are at stake.”

Cameroon is ranked 131st of 180 countries in the 2014 Reporters Without Borders world press freedom index.

(photo: Felix Cyriaque Ebole Bola and Rodrigue Tongue)

Is this Poor Ethics or Human Indecency?

Was it right for this woman to intentionally trip a migrant trying to flee the police? Lauren Frayer reports for NPR's Newscast unit that N1TV is "associated with Hungary's far-right anti-immigrant party," the Jobbik party.

Thoughts?

Latest First Amendment Survey Shows Support for Press Protections Bouncing Back

Here's the link.

The startlingly garish infographic.

A Disarming Moment of Free Will

A Defense of the Daily News Cover

Glock 17 Night firing to catch muzzle flash. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here's the link.

Reading about gun violence isn’t enough. A shooting is a visual tragedy. There’s a muzzle flash, bullets, a wound, blood, and bodies. When we see an upsetting image, our brain draws on tens of thousands of years of evolutionary training for a proper response. We are flooded with chemicals that make us feel the badness of what we see, so that we can adjust our behavior accordingly. Maybe that means running away from a tiger, or maybe it means passing gun control legislation. But horror is healthy and normal, and means your brain is working as intended. It’s a useful response, because it might convince you—it might force you—to viscerally react to our nation’s epidemic of gun violence. If people see photos of Alison Parker being effortlessly slaughtered by a disgruntled former co-worker with an easily obtained firearm, maybe they will conclude that guns are devices of horror and easy death. If so, it will be worth the discomfort. It’s a nice fantasy, but you can’t pretend that discomfort is optional; feeling like shit is a necessary part of being alive.

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Poynter Discusses Use of Shooting Video and Fax

An all-too familiar frame from this discussion and others:

"It depends."

Fronts from other papers.

Daily News explains itself.

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We Will Think About the Problem of Free Will for A Very Few Minutes. And Then We Will Stop.

Ethical Implications for Journalists? You Tell Me

Trailer for End of the Tour

Hey, kids. Watch this movie. This is an inside view of interviewing. This is reasonably close to how it's done. Is it ethical?

Advisers Acting Un-Ethically

While I was Managing Editor at Pasadena City College, two administrators were charged with allegedly accepting bribes from and LED light company and getting a free trip to India to 'Inspect' the factories.  I have a friend that is a real estate agent and I asked him to look up the houses of the administrators to see whether there was anything interesting about their homes.

I wanted to find that they had just bought a new million dollar home or just re-modeled their kitchen with brand new appliances. All I found was a modest home with a reasonable mortgage, nothing unusual. I shared the info with my partner Senior Editor and we both decided it was not newsworthy information and did not need to be reported, I threw the print out in the trash.

Three days later the paper comes out with this article on 8, the back page:
http://www.pcccourier.com/2012/06/12/van-pelts-paid-279000-for-home-in-tony-neighborhood/

Notice that the comments for this article are closed.  This is because of the windfall of angry comments that were received about this article.  They included comments about how pointless the article was, how it hurt the credibility of the newspaper, and that the article seemed like something out of the National Enquirer.

My adviser somehow got a hold of this information. He then wrote this article at the last minute and put a staff writers name on it (without informing him) and placed the article on the last page of the news section. We had no News Editor, so this was MY section; I designed it, I picked and edited the articles for it, and I laid out the all the news pages, along with my managerial responsibilities.  I had left the office at around 1:15AM after finishing my pages.  The next morning I find this article in the paper.

I don't know what my advisers reasoning were for printing it, and when i confronted him he denied doing it completely. But if I had to guess, it was my advisers upbringing as a journalist.  My adviser was originally from South Africa, and as we discussed in class, UK journalism seems to have a utilitarian perspective.  He may have thought that since we had the info, everyone in the PCC community needed to have the info as well.

Whatever his reasoning, I disagreed and so did the rest of my editors and writers.  We at some point had a yelling match in class about our displeasure with the article, I hope he figured out that it was unethical for him to do what he did. As editor of the section and Managing editor of the newspaper I was obviously pissed that the entire PCC community saw this article.

Views of U.S. Global Power Fall to 40-Year Low

http://www.people-press.org/2013/12/03/public-sees-u-s-power-declining-as-support-for-global-engagement-slips/12-3-2013-1/

PCC Journalism Adviser Reinstated After Showing Naked Pictures to a Student

My former journalism adviser showed naked pictures of himself to a student I worked with.  He is now being reinstated.  He is a great teacher, but is this ethical?

http://www.pcccourier.com/2013/12/12/swil-2/


Check out his blog:
http://warrenswil.com/

A World Without Newspapers

Business Communications in a Post-Gutenberg World

By David Schneiderman
Senior Counselor, The Abernathy MacGregor Group Inc.

In 1984, Rupert Murdoch thought he had seen the
future. He summoned his top editors and publishers to a
meeting in New York to learn about “electronic journalism”
and the impending death of printed newspapers.
After two days of spirited discussions and a primitive
demonstration of an electronic Washington Post, the
attendees declared that the demise of printed newspapers
was inevitable.
Strangely, we didn’t discuss what might happen to the
advertising dollars that accounted for the lion’s share of
revenue for newspapers. It was merely assumed that those
dollars would migrate seamlessly to the electronic newspaper.
The participants focused on a simple, attractive equation:
If you subtract the cost of newsprint, printing and the
subsequent job reductions in production, newspapers
would become money machines. As we now know, it did
not quite work out that way.
As newspapers struggle to remain viable in the post-
Gutenberg world, it is worth recalling the newspaper
industry’s long and tumultuous love/hate relationship
with technology. The arrival of radio and television
threatened to displace newspapers as the dominant source
of news and information. Television did make the
evening newspaper irrelevant, but with fewer competitors,
the survivors thrived. In the 1970’s, computerized
typesetting permitted newspapers to substantially reduce
payroll, turning them into cash cows and attractive
investment vehicles. Now, technology has become the
Grim Reaper, with the Internet steadily drawing readers
and advertisers from print and imperiling the very existence
of newspapers.
There are no easy solutions to the decline of newspapers,
but ultimately, websites with large, desirable audiences
will win, which is why the appealing content newspapers
know how to produce remains the crucial element for success
in online journalism. However this plays out, every
business is confronted with not only unprecedented and
growing challenges, but also exciting opportunities in this
new communications ecosystem. Here are some of the
most consequential:
Web journalism is fast becoming the dominant form of
news media. Not so very long ago, web journalism was
nothing more than an afterthought, the electronic version
of a print story. Now that’s changed, as journalists post stories
throughout the day, adding updates, corrections and
new material in an effort to be current and competitive.
This web-first approach means that information, access and
materials should be provided first and foremost with the
Web version in mind. Online journalism is multimedia and
corporations must now equip themselves to provide news
with video, audio and graphic content, moving beyond the
traditional text-only news release. And communications
professionals must gear themselves to the post-it-now aspect
of web-based journalism.
Nothing is ever final online. With news websites rapidly
becoming the primary editions, they are now publishing
the most fluid form of journalistic storytelling ever. Stories,
in essence, are never quite put to bed because they are so
readily revised or even entirely rewritten throughout the
24/7 news cycle.
It is, therefore, essential that sharp communications teams
be equipped to “fix” stories as they evolve over the course
of a day, rather than having to fight the uphill battle
against what’s been memorialized in print. This of course
means that life must change for everyone in the approval
and response process in order to stay on top of stories as
they are posted hour by hour and minute by minute.
The Internet has democratized media by shifting power
from institutions to individuals. The media world has
evolved from a top down, command and control model
into a complex ecosystem of mainstream media, blogs and
user-generated content. It was once relatively clear where
news came from (your local paper), when it would arrive
(each morning) and who was the messenger (the longtime
beat reporter). Today, the news can come from anywhere,
anybody, anytime. News, gossip, and rumor move instantly
through the Web—often without the benefit of an editor
attempting to separate fact from fiction. One important
scoop can turn an obscure blogger into an influencer virtually
overnight. Conversely, a reporter’s reputation is far
more fragile as readers are quick to identify and call out any
example of journalistic malfeasance.
The media landscape is constantly in flux, and as a result,
the traditional news release distribution list may never be
the same again. It’s always been important to figure out
who really are the important reporters. Now it can be as
important to identify the important bloggers and opinion
influencers in your space. Get to know them. Decide which
AWorld Without Newspapers
Business Communications in a Post-Gutenberg World
By David Schneiderman
Senior Counselor, The Abernathy MacGregor Group Inc.
1
ones you can work with, and cultivate them, and keep an
eye on the wannabes who can quickly develop a following.
Know the different rules of engagement for each individual
who matters, not just the rules as they’ve traditionally been
applied by different journalistic outlets.
Demand-driven journalism increasingly influences news
judgments. Journalists once cared primarily about getting a
great story, being on the front page and winning awards,
usually in that order. They still care about those things, but
they are often now caught up in how many people are reading
their stories on the Web. The popularity of a story is
playing an increasingly larger role in assignments and story
placements on a web site. This creates the strongest incentive
since the era of Hearst and Pulitzer to search out
stories that will attract eyeballs, and to write headlines that
may not faithfully reflect an article’s tone and content.
This will make it harder to interest reporters in stories that
may be important and worthy, but don’t have legs.
Reporters now keep a close watch on the most viewed and
most emailed story lists on their sites, and you should too.
You now have intelligence on what moves readers and what
doesn’t on a particular news site. This will help you in
deciding how best to pitch a story and to whom. And it will
give you insight into the mindsets, preferences and interests
of readers.
The best and most influential reporters are becoming
brand names. Journalists are embracing the tools of social
media to create online personas. They are breaking free of
the constraints of traditional media to blog and tweet
everything from deep thoughts to random musings to personal
information that was considered verboten not too
many years ago. Not everyone can be a one man media
conglomerate, but reporters are encouraged by their editors
to be more transparent and accessible to readers offering
new opportunities for engagement.
Brand name reporters are far more accessible than their
counterparts in the era of old media. You now have multiple
avenues to get to know the most important reporters
covering your business. Keep track of their musings
through various social media tools and connect with them
when appropriate. A reporter’s tweet can become an entry
point for a conversation outside of the usual give-and-take
dictated by a breaking news story.
The distinction between news and opinion will continue
to erode. Successful bloggers know that a mix of news,
opinion and expertise, with a dose of attitude, is the surest
route to growing an audience. This is not lost on mainstream
reporters so it is not surprising that journalism, in all
its forms, is becoming more and more subjective. The days
of “just the facts” are gone (if they ever really existed),
as reporters use context, analysis and third parties to shape
a story that reflects their point of view. This doesn’t mean
that most reporters are partisan, but it does mean that
they now have less incentive to be disinterested observers
of events.
The upside of this reality is that it is now far easier to
know where a reporter is coming from and to deal with
him or her accordingly. You also have the ability to communicate
directly, particularly through a company blog, to
the audiences that matter to you—your institutional
investors, your employees, your business-to-business customers.
So companies (and universities and non-profits)
must think of themselves as publishers and expand their
ab ility to speak to these constituencies through the Web
without a media filter.
Tabloid journalism will flourish on the Web. Unfortunately,
a flood of fictitious junk courses through the Web
and it will only get worse. Most goes nowhere, but some
goes viral, forcing companies to spend time and resources
containing the damage. Thanks to the First Amendment,
there will never be a sheriff on the Web, so this challenge
will always be with us. This new media world may sound
eerily similar to the old media world—the very old media
world of early 20th century newspapers. Tabloid journalism;
opinion mixing with news; intense competition; a premium
on speed—Hearst and Pulitzer would have been very
comfortable and successful practicing web journalism.
In the 21st century media world, it will be critical to distinguish
between credible and irresponsible news sources
and to know which have clout and which merely create
noise that will quickly dissipate. It will be equally important
to have a basis for gauging when a public response
will sting the opponent or simply feed your opponents’
desires. With increasing opportunities to engage your
critics, it will take discipline to decide when it’s in your
interest to respond and when it’s best to remain quiet.
Consider creating an internal “truth squad” if you
haven’t already, one equipped to aggressively monitor
and correct inaccuracies in real time.
A Final Perspective. Many of the fundamental, underlying
principles of effective public relations remain unchanged by
this emerging world without newspapers. But make no
mistake, the revolution is indeed here. And that fact makes
it all the more imperative that every institution affected by
this revolution not miss the boat in adapting its communications
capabilities to this new reality.
David Schneiderman was formerly Chief Executive Officer
of Village Voice Media. If you would like to discuss
this article, please contact David Schneiderman at
206-437-9998/das@abmac.com in Seattle or Lex Suvanto at
212-371-5999/lex@abmac.com in New York.
2 JANUARY 2010
AWorld Without Newspapers

Anonymous Sources: I know its Fox News, but it's still interesting

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/10/new-york-top-court-rules-fox-reporter-cannot-be-forced-to-reveal-sources-in/

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/25/exclusive-movie-massacre-suspect-laid-out-plans-in-package-mailed-to/

Do you think they could have gotten the story with the anonymous source?  Lets forget that its Fox News, if an actual news outlet did this would it be ethical to use the anonymous source?  Would the New York Times have done this?

Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

SF Weekly: Obnoxious Google employee shouting at protestors turns out to be local union organizer

Bummer. Even political protests can turn out to be staged events. I wonder what he was trying to accomplish by masquerading as an entitled Google employee. He certainly caused more harm than good to his cause.

And what about the journalists who actually reported his antics - as fact, no less? I would have done the same thing had I been in their position; it would have been a knee-jerk reaction. But I suppose that would have been yet another example of sensational reporting. The temptation to share things on the internet is just too great in this age of social media and information. Unfortunately, this instinct seems to have leaked into the world of professional journalism as well.

But balanced journalism, or attempts at it, will always be susceptible to people knowingly bending the truth. As the ability to put material in front of eyes grows and the number of eyes perusing material before publication shrinks, it's never been more true. [SF Weekly]

Here is the original article, along with a video of what we now know is a staged event:

SFBG: Union organizer shouts down protesters as they block private Google shuttle

Interesting Article About Pronouns in the Press

Found this while researching Chelsea Manning for my final:
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/22/media_willfully_misgender_chelsea_manning/

Good read in case you missed it...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/business/media/after-snowden-revelations-a-changed-world-for-journalists.html?hp&_r=0