Europeans

An exercise in humility: fifty years of journalism's lesser angels

An accounting of fifty years’ worth of Darts is hardly a balm for an industry careening through a wrenching transition. It is a concentrated dose of every journalistic sin imaginable, and some that defy imagination: plagiarism, laziness, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, hypocrisy, photo manipulation, staged news, stupidity, bad taste, collaborating with law enforcement, junkets, caving to advertisers, paying to play, protecting sacred cows, cowardice, lying, cheating, exacting revenge, miserliness, endangering sources, fabrication, perpetrating hoaxes—a rather sorry record.

It also is a distorted record. There are five decades of Laurels, too, celebrating journalism’s more noble inclinations. But Darts & Laurels did not become iconic for its gentle caress; and awareness, as they say in recovery literature, is the first step toward improvement. Here then is a sampling of lowlights, as chronicled in this column since 1961.

Source: Columbia Journalism Review

Magazine Offices Firebombed in Paris After Use of “Prophet ...

by Y L

Magazine Offices Firebombed in Paris After Use of “Prophet Muhammad” As Editor

PARIS — The office of a French satirical magazine here was badly damaged by a firebomb early on Wednesday, the publisher said, after it published a spoof issue “guest edited” by the Prophet Muhammad to salute the victory of an Islamist party in Tunisian elections. The publication also said hackers had disrupted its Web site.

The magazine, Charlie Hebdo, had announced a special issue for publication Wednesday, renamed “Charia Hebdo,” a play on the word in French for Shariah law.

The magazine’s editor, Stephane Charbonnier, told Europe 1 radio that the police had called just before 5 a.m. to report a fire of criminal origin. News reports said a Molotov cocktail had been thrown through a window. The special edition was on its way to the newsstands, the editor said, and will appear as scheduled....

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Molotov Cocktails Replace Letters-to-the-Editor: French Satire ...

by Diana West

First, notice the religiously correct references to Mohammed. My old AP Stylebook recommends “Mohammed,” plain and simple, to denote “the founder of the of Islamic religion” — not “the Prophet Mohammed,” as the Daily Mail story calls him. This title is inflected with the obeisance of acceptance.  (I note also that my old AP Stylebook recommends “Jesus,” not “the Son of God Jesus.”) The magazine, by the way, was commenting on the rising power and fortunes of sharia and its Islamic — not Islam ist