N=1 - thanks for that. Additional resources:

Poynter institute: poynter.org

Committee for Concerned Journalists:

http://www.concernedjournalists.org/

CCJ was formerly a sister organization to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which runs journalism.org. They split (different directions, as I understand, not personalities or principles), with PEJ joining with Pew to focus on research, CCJ partnering with the (good) Columbia-Missouri journo school to focus more on training.

Poynter is older than all of them, does a little bit of everything.

Sorry and thanks for letting me know.Link (repaired) at my name.

Thanks for the other links. I also moseyed around the papers of Ben Franklin and posted a short essay he wrote about the reading and reporting of history.

http://revolutionredux.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/what-they-were-saying-benjamin-franklins-party-for-virtue/

He posted this link to a YouTube of a hypothetical anti-Jefferson TV spot from the 1800 election.

Culled verbatim from the press of the day:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KaPRnsgFxOU

Hilarious. That is some negative campaigning.

Of course, back then, newspapers were administration organs and opposition organs. There was no objectivity.

"Shooter please name the tangible benefits "we the people" have reaped from the umpteen trillions spent on funding and using our standing military across foreign lands in the last 50 years? Start with Grenada, Nicaragua, Iraq, Viet Nam, Korea, Afghanistan or any other scrappy little country thousands of miles away that we've decided to splatter against the wall to show our cultural and economic dominance? Where's my peace dividend by the way? Does it come in the mail after my stimulus check?"

Until you brought up Grenada. We all know -- at least those who don't wear liberal rose-colored glasses -- that President Reagan saved the United States from certain destruction by invading Granada, which was only pretending to be a small island, and which we all know -- except for you touchy-feely liberals -- was working with the Axis of Evil to transform its deceptively-small smoking gun into a mushroom cloud.

And remember: as former National Security Council head and "Principals" committee chair Condoleeza Rice said, "We don't torture."

Try this:

http://www.bartleby.com/225/index.html

Chapters VI and VII, though the whole thing is fascinating.

Thanks to both of you (and quickstrategy for earlier posts) for such an excellent explanation of exactly how I saw my duty and relationship with the media for 28 years as an Air Force public affairs officer. I often found the vast majority of my colleagues including some of my commanders, walking safely in the trees instead of seeing the forest and the whole picture. It becomes a question of loyalty. It is more comfortable to be loyal to your buddies, operation, mission, unit than it is to question the soundness of whether you are being fully loyal to your nation and oath. I got bars of Dove soap in my in box, called a nigger lover, wimp, desk flyer and many more negative epitaphs when I questioned where a colleague’s loyalty should lie.

It is the same reason that I find it hard to hang around the American Legion or Vietnam vets. I’m not trying to pat myself on the back and I have found many fellow officers who share my views at Iraq War protests. I’m trying to point out that the nature of performing a difficult mission or task under extremely trying circumstances and the nature of the military job, causes far too many to forget to question themselves and the overall purpose of our military even after leaving active duty.

When you get lowlifes like Nixon, Bush and Cheney and the kind of people that join there sick team, it becomes monumentally more difficult for subordinate military members to hold on to your integrity and loyalty to the ideals that founded our nation. That in no way is meant to excuse the terrible damage that the Cheney propagandist have done to our nation.

Sorry for replacing a broken link with broken spelling. Will repair now to repair typos, links and other ephemera.

But I'll leave you with a question: what are the ethics of journalists and editors steadfastly refusing to report the issues of the healthcare profession that provides 95% of reimbursed services? (It's not what you think it is, either.)

Does that serve the public's trust? Does it violate the social contract?

Is this different than corporate media using propaganda in that it deliberately omits information?

NB: I write about this ad nauseum on my blog, and the link at my name will take you to just one recent post.

I used to feel like saluting when I read Karen Kwiatkowski. I thought she was marvellous, really, when she came out with the original "In Rumsfeld's Shop" essays, and for a while thereafter. I think by now she has become a bit of a fixture in a libertarian small publishing niche, and her writing has lost its freshness, but that doesn't negate my admiration for her early stuff, at all.

One of the most under-reported stories of 2004 from Project Censored. That's a program at the J school at CSU Sonoma.

The Media Can Legally Lie

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/11-the-media-can-legally-lie/

I suspect this current story we are discussing may yet make 2008's line up.

Also Google - Into The Buzzsaw

http://www.amazon.com/Into-Buzzsaw-Leading-Journalists-Expose/dp/1573929727

Link to Amazon above and some reviews below

http://www.alternet.org/story/12753/

http://skepdic.com/refuge/buzzsaw.html

http://www.freedomofthepress.net/intothebuzzsaw.htm

Would the media parrot the Pentagon's PR people if they were writing for a military-unfriendly public? I doubt it. To give an example, the French have been "keeping order" in Ivory Coast for years now, with much of the same neocolonialist and universalist mindset as the US military, but the French press has mostly reported on incidents that shed a bad light on French soldiers, and has shown very little appreciation for the (probable) fact that they are preventing a civil war. The US media, by contrast, seems panic-stricken at the thought that they could be accused of "not supporting the troops" if they report the truth about the Iraq occupation. Why the difference? At least in part, I think, because European children don't sing battle hymns at school, and because Europeans have painful and shameful memories of war.

Both tendencies have their drawbacks, of course: one would prefer objective reporting in all cases. But the US situation seems much more worrisome: like ancient Rome, the US is starting to consider that the country serves the legions, not the other way around. A must-read on the economic consequences of popular army-worship is to be found in the April 26 issue of Alternet.org, "The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke" (link: http://www.alternet.org/story/83555/?page=1). Money quote: "By 1990 the value of the weapons, equipment and factories devoted to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment in U.S. manufacturing." That is an astounding figure. And it predates the Bush administration, so things can only be worse now.