Fox Unleashes Attack Dogs on Other Media

Obama must start following through on campaign promises

(NEWSER) - Risking his wife's wrath, Clarence Page has to admit he agrees with Sean Hannity. The Fox News host has correctly called President Obama on the disconnect between campaign rhetoric and the attempted boycott of Hannity's employer. "It is disingenuous for right-wing pundits to accuse Obama of dividing the country, considering the five-star job they have done in turning us against each other," Page writes. "But if Obama is being judged by a different standard of civility, it is a standard he set for himself." More»

Huffington Post, AP, Philadelphia Inquirer , NYT all score prizes

(NEWSER) - The 2012 Pulitzer Prizes are out, and for the first time in 35 years a Pulitzer for fiction is not among them, reports the AP , which itself snagged an award for its series on NYPD spying. Without further ado, the list of winners:

• Public service: Philadelphia Inquirer
• Breaking news reporting: The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News staff
• Investigative reporting: Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley of the AP, and Michael J. Berens and Ken Armstrong of the Seattle Times
• Explanatory reporting: David Kocieniewski of the New York Times

Journalists urged to report ethics violations

(NEWSER) - If you're a News Corp employee and you suspect a colleague of underhanded activity—hacking phones or bribing cops, for example—there's a phone number Rupert Murdoch would like you to call. A 24-hour "alertline" has been set up for workers in Murdoch's media empire who want to report violations of the company's ethics code, the Independent reports. Workers whose accusations turn out to be unfounded will be protected "from retaliation," a policy document given to News Corp staff promises. More»

New book on Obama full of dubious claims: Jacob Weisberg

(NEWSER) - You can’t always believe what you read—especially if it’s written by Ron Suskind. The wide-ranging claims made in Confidence Men , his account of the Obama administration, are as dubious as ever, writes Jacob Weisberg in Slate . “Issues of accuracy, fairness, and integrity come up nearly every time Suskind publishes something.” Some specifics errors in this book: The Federal Reserve isn't a bureau but a board; Horatio Alger wasn't a character but an author; and the "centuries-old" gothic spires of Yale Law School were built in 1931. More»

Was lax on owner, but says it's better now

(NEWSER) - The Wall Street Journal did a lousy job of initially covering Rupert Murdoch's phone hacking scandal, admits the paper's special editorial committee. The paper was "slower than it should have been at the outset to pursue the phone-hacking scandal story" and failed to ask tough questions when it interviewed Rupert Murdoch for his side of the story, according to a report from the WSJ committee set up to oversee the editorial integrity of the paper after Murdoch bought it in 2007. More»