WEDNESDAY'S LINKS: No Word on Kidnapped Fox Crew, Trend Pieces Out, 'NYT' and Endorsements

By: E&P Staff In today's links, there is still no word on kidnapped Fox News journalist Steve Centanni and his cameraman, who disappeared in Gaza nine days ago, David Ignatius comments on the difficult balancing act being performed by Arab news network al-Jazeera, and CUNY's new journalism school will open on Monday.

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No Word on Fox News Kidnapping
Guardian: The fate of two Fox News journalists kidnapped in Gaza is still unknown, nine days after they were abducted. Steve Centanni, a 60-year-old American, and his cameraman, New Zealander Olaf Wiig, 36, were abducted by gunmen from their TV van on Monday August 14 near the Palestinian security services' headquarters. Their captors have not come forward with demands and the authorities do not appear to know who the kidnappers are.

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Al-Jazeera's Tricky Balancing Act
David Ignatius in the Washington Post: Al-Jazeera has been attacked by American officials as a propaganda tool for Osama bin Laden and other Muslim radicals. And as a journalist, I have often found its coverage unbalanced. It tries too hard to present the Arab news, rather than just the news. That said, I was struck, in talking to Sheikh, by how complicated it has become for al-Jazeera to cover this part of the world.

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Look Who's Fair and Balanced
Lawrence Pintak in CJR Daily: The summer of 2006 marked an important milestone for Arab media. Israel and Hezbollah were locked in a bitter conflict that would claim the lives of more than 150 Israelis and an estimated 1,000 Lebanese -- a third of them children. Each day brought brutal new images of civilian casualties. On American television, leading journalists, such as CNN's star presenters Anderson Cooper and John Roberts, regularly referred to Hezbollah as "terrorists" or a "terrorist militia," without bothering to attribute the label to Israeli or U.S. sources. But on the news broadcasts of the Arab world's dominant all-news channels, Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, such polarizing language was rarely heard.

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This Monday, 'Dean' Steve Shepard Welcomes First CUNY J-School Class
Media Industry Newsletter: It is been about a year and a half since City College of New York alumnus Shepard ended a 21-year stint as BusinessWeek editor-in-chief to "come home" and start the City University of New York graduate school of journalism. The first 60 enrollees will begin the three-semester master's program Monday (August 28) in the West 41st Street building that once housed the New York Herald-Tribune.

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Trend Pieces in Crisis
Michael Calderone in the New York Observer: Writers just claim something is a trend with no support,? said Kelly Bit, a college senior and aspiring journalist, in a downtown bar recently. ?That?s what trend pieces are.? Can it be? Anecdotally at least, in the summer of 2006, the trend piece appears to be a journalistic form in crisis. The basic formula has long carried reporters and readers alike through lazy vacation months: colorful quotations from a number (specifically, three) of the trendsetters; a blurb or two from academic experts; some vaguely thesis-related statistics; a reference to the broader zeitgeist. Now the emphasis seems to be less on which way the cultural winds are blowing and more on the gaps in the stories, through which the wind leaks out.

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JonBenet Coverage Makes Me Feel Ashamed
Jon Friedman in Marketwatch: No wonder people hate the media. I do, too, sometimes. We drop the ball again and again and yet we act baffled and indignant when those polls come out saying that in the public's view, journalists are one cut above, say, sanitation workers. We feel hurt when the public tells us that it hates and distrusts our profession. Then we blow it all over again with a story like the JonBenet example. How did the media bungle this story? Let me count the ways ...

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A Rough Guide To NY Times Endorsements
Jerry Skurnick in the New York Observer: Some may wonder if it?s all worth it, and whether the Times endorsement can possibly matter quite that much. As someone involved in local politics since 1966, I can tell you the answers: yes, and yes. The reason The Times matters is that it is what another consultant likes to call an ?independent verifier.? That is, it?s one of those trusted and politically independent institutions or persons that can ratify both a candidate?s self-promotion and the denigration of his or her opponent.