Passing of a Kennedy

A committed liberal in my life sent me a message last week, reading, "If all this Teddy Kennedy coverage makes ME want to vomit, what must it be doing to people who disagreed with him politically? If these talking heads can even remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne, I bet they couldn't spell it."
The Boston Globe began one of its obit pieces: "TED KENNEDY was not a great man."
So with a figure as divisive and storied as Kennedy, what is the right tone to strike in coverage and how much coverage should we have?
NPR's ombudsman tackles some of the issues.
How much is enough? How does the timing of the death play into coverage choices? Farrah Fawcett's death might have been a fairly major news story until Michael Jackson died unexpectedly shortly after. How do we cover flawed individuals with honesty while still respecting the truth? Did you know what Chappquiddick was or who Kopechne was? Does that matter?

Quotable

We'll be talking about interviews next week in lecture. To prepare, check out this piece on the wildly successful Q&A feature in the New York Times magazine and liberties taken with questions and answers. And listen to this audio file of a story from NPR's "On the Media" show (available through the J202 podcast on Learn@UW).
Should we edit people's words? Are "ums, likes and you knows" different from more substantive words? Is it different in audio than in text?

Smoking and Advertising

Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen used her column this week to criticize a cigarette brand and its advertising. She says the Camel 9 brand, packaged in black with hot-pink foil, is designed to rope in younger girls as cigarette consumers.
Earlier this year, New York Times ad industry reporter Stuart Elliott covered the launch of Camel 9, the positive reaction of investors and the company's move to market the "male" Camel brand to female consumers.
NPR also has a package on Camel 9 that's worth listening to.
Quindlen does a good job reminding us all that this is a legal product. Do the congressmen who knocked on magazine editors' doors to get them to eschew Camel 9 ads have a decent strategy? Is that one way to keep this brand from marketing to girls? Is it marketing to girls? If it's not, should ads be pulled or should women be allowed to decide whether they smoke and whether their brand is Camel 9? If you worked in an agency, what kinds of ethical decisions would you have to make in marketing products that are legal but reviled by some (cigarettes, liquor, guns, fast food, sugary drinks ... the list is getting longer)? Who are the stakeholders when we make ethical decisions in advertising?