Searching for Scandal

This article talks about the CEO of NPR, Vivian Schiller's resingation. After James O'Keefe posted a video of one exec badmouthing the tea party and saying that NPR should stop getting federal funding, Schiller resigned. The article mentions that O'Keefe had previously pleaded guilty to tampering with phones in the office of Senator Mary Landrieu. Now he had people go undercover and act like members of a fake Muslim group. They began a conversation with the NPR exec, eventually getting him to speak badly about the tea party and and media bias, and unlucky for him, they recorded it.

It seems to me that O'Keefe is fishing for scandal. He's digging and searching, almost trying to provoke people to say things or to catch them saying things that can get them into trouble. It may seem like watchdog journalism, but it seems to me like he's trying, in a sense, to create scandal.

It is also interesting to note that this article on foxnews.com had this story as their headline all day Wednesday, while CNN only had an article lower down on their page that linked to Entertainment Weekly. Even so, the article in Entertainment Weekly didn't say much about the details of her resignation. In class we talk about how each news source basically covers the same thing, but here they do not. CNN barely covered is and FoxNews had it as a headline all day. It is very interesting to note their difference in reporting and deciding what is important.