journalists
cmonforton | September 6, 2017Investigative journalists play an important role in raising public awareness about worker health and safety issues. The number and quality of stories over the last 12 months was exceptional so "The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety" includes a full section which highlights our picks for top-notch reporting.
The stories that Kim and I profile in Section III of the yearbook include the following:
A three-part investigation by NBC Bay Area that examined the workers’ compensation system in California. In one city, the medical claims of nearly 70 firefighters were denied and the…
kkrisberg | June 30, 2017At the Center for Public Integrity, a five-part investigative series on safety at the nation’s nuclear facilities finds that workers can and do suffer serious injuries, yet the Department of Energy typically imposes only minimal fines for safety incidents and companies get to keep a majority of their profits, which does little to improve working conditions. Reporters estimated that the number of safety incidents has tripled since 2013.
For example, in 2009, the chair of a safety committee at Idaho National Laboratory told high-ranking managers that damaged plutonium plates could put workers…
kkrisberg | June 21, 2016At Reveal, Will Evans investigates how lobbyists for the temporary staffing industry squashed a legislative effort in Illinois to reform the industry’s widespread discriminatory hiring practices. Evans has previously reported on how the temp industry discriminates against workers of color, particularly black workers, using code words, symbols and gestures to illegally hire workers according to sex, race and age.
In Illinois, the Chicago Workers’ Collaborative developed legislation to confront such hiring practices. Illinois Senate Bill 47 would have required temp agencies to track the race…
lborkowski | February 22, 2012Earlier today, US Attorney Booth Goodwin charged Upper Big Branch mine superintendent Gary May with "conspiring to impede the Mine Safety and Health Administration's enforcement efforts" at that mine. Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia was the site of numerous health and safety violations leading up to the April 5, 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners. The Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. has the details on the charges against May:
May, 43, of Bloomingrose, is accused of taking part in a scheme to provide advance warning of government inspections and then…
lborkowski | May 24, 2010The New York Times' Clifford J. Levy reports on violence against at journalists investigating corruption in the Moscow suburbs:
Mikhail Beketov had been warned, but would not stop writing. About dubious land deals. Crooked loans. Under-the-table hush money. All evidence, he argued in his newspaper, of rampant corruption in this Moscow suburb.
"Last spring, I called for the resignation of the city's leadership," Mr. Beketov said in one of his final editorials. "A few days later, my automobile was blown up. What is next for me?"
Not long after, he was savagely beaten outside his home and left…
grrlscientist | December 15, 2009tags: Hungry Beast, television, prank, hoax, media watch, ABC, streaming video
The Hungry Beast team takes on the Australian media to see if the journalists can discern fantasy from reality. They fail miserably.
bioephemera | April 6, 2009Scibling Bora has expressed his wish "to end once for all the entire genre of discussing the "bloggers vs. journalists" trope," and tried to do so with perhaps the most massive science-journalism-Web2.0 post evah.
Bora says,
the whole "bloggers will replace journalists" trope is silly and wrong. No, journalists will replace journalists. It's just that there will be fewer of them paid, and more of us unpaid. Some will be ex-newspapermen, others ex-bloggers, but both will be journalists. Instead of on paper, journalism will happen online. Instead of massaging your article to fit into two inches…
amillikan | April 5, 2009While the rumor that Google is in "late stage negotiations" to acquire Twitter, the social networking website based on text message-style entries of 140 characters, hasn't been confirmed, the feasibility of such a notion says volumes about Twitter's massive rise in popularity over the past years. Now the third-largest social networking website (behind facebook and myspace), Twitter has revolutionized the way information is generated and communicated. Naturally, ScienceBloggers are no stranger to this micro-blogging phenomenon. Bora from A Blog Around the Clock reflects on how social…
amillikan | February 21, 2009In this week's Science Saturday, blogger and astronomer Phil Plait chats with science journalist Carl Zimmer. They talk about the time Buzz Aldrin punched a moon-landing denialist in the face, how consumer-culture gadgetry can serve the cause of science, the death of newspapers in the Internet age, and the big questions in astronomy that Phil hopes we'll have answers for soon.
grrlscientist | February 2, 2009Have you read the latest piece of anti-intellectualism to come out of the LATimes? Apparently, their so-called journalists are showing their ignorance by stating that Jill Biden, who earned her PhD in Education -- and who also happens to be the wife of Senator Vice President Joe Biden -- cannot be referred to as "Doctor Biden". What have they been smoking??
"My feeling is if you can't heal the sick, we don't call you doctor," said Bill Walsh, copy desk chief for the Washington Post's A section and the author of two language books. (He apparently agrees with the LATimes' stupidity, because…
amillikan | January 3, 2009In this week's featured episode of Science Saturday from Bloggingheads, George Johnson and John Horgan returned with new insight on the controversy provoked by their last appearance, including some negative comments directed toward ScienceBlogger Abbie from ERV.
Johnson admitted that he may have been reacting to his cumulative perception of lower-end blogging, the existence of which Horgan explained by 'The law of the conservation of bullshit'—no matter how much the information sphere expands, there's still going to be the same proportion of bullshit circulating throughout it.
But…
amillikan | December 23, 2008The advent of the science blogger is changing the way people talk about science. But along with new modes of communication and new rhetoric come new questions and opinions about how this evolution is affecting the scientific process. ScienceBlogger Coturnix from A Blog Around the Clock posted his views about why both scientists and science journalists sometimes rant about science bloggers, and why this is a good thing.