Richard Engel, NBC’s savvy, chief foreign correspondent, had some pointed comments the other day in the wake of the Nuseum’s controversial decision to not honor two cameramen–working for Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV–who were killed in the line of Middle East “duty.” It’s a microcosm of the increasingly controvertible issue of activists as journalists.  Basically, who’s [...]

This column periodically highlights juxtaposed differences–whether a function of priorities or proactive hustle–in local media coverage and occasionally points out prominent proof-reading oversights in print. The inevitable theme of the latter: While mistakes, of course, have always happened in deadlined media, it’s never been like this. As newspapers struggle to compete, chronic down-staffing and overall [...]

* “Syria is Iraq’s twin: an artificial state that was also born after World War I inside lines drawn by imperial powers. Like Iraq, Syria’s constituent communities–Sunnis, Alawite/Shiites, Kurds, Druze, Christians–never volunteered to live together under agreed rules. So, like Iraq, Syria has been ruled for much of its modern history by either a colonial [...]

* “We should be lucid: a country that depends almost entirely on the international community for the salaries of its soldiers and policemen, for most of its investments and partly on it for its current civil expenditure, cannot be really independent.”–Bernard Bajolet, departing French ambassador to Afghanistan. * “We’ve all suspected it. But for President [...]

*In our continuous-loop, blogosphered, Twitterized communications universe, we have been reminded by the Boston bombings that there remains a vital role for serious journalism. CNN, of course, has become Exhibit A for all that’s wrong with a get-it-first, hope-it’s right modus operandi. And the New York Post remains a tabloid sham. This is more than [...]

* “Cuba has taken some modest steps towards opening up. Easing up on travel restrictions has been one key area. Cuban authorities can say that it is easier now for Cubans to travel to the U.S. than for U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba.”–Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy analysis center. [...]

We now know Al Neuharth, the USA Today founder who died last Friday at 89, was a visionary. He addressed the commuter niche and, ironically, anticipated diminished attention spans. But he certainly wasn’t greeted as a visionary by the newspaper establishment in 1982. That was the debut year of his mold-breaking national product, with its [...]

The 21st century has become an ongoing repository of declassified documents from the 1960s. Among them: a reminder of exactly what President John F. Kennedy faced with the militant Cold Warriors he inherited at the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  That was especially so with its chairman, General Lyman Lemnitzer, who missed Eisenhower, had no respect [...]

* “The best thing we as militaries can do is to … get back to peace, so that diplomacy can work.”–Adm. Samuel Locklear, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific. * “Please help us to do something before our tragedy becomes your tragedy.”–Francine Wheeler, mother of a child murdered in Newtown. * “A pretty shameful [...]

How does this sound for a movie? A unique, show-business oriented, coming-of-age-story that’s also a 1960′s period piece–that combustible era of racial riots, Jim Crow, Freedom Riders, anti-war protests and blind-siding assassinations. Then add the phenomenon of a dominant, black-owned recording business that shrewdly dared to market to both black and white listeners while jump-starting [...]