Media Coverage

TWO TELEVISION cameras were on hand when 5th District city Councilwoman Helen Holton stood in the 5100 block of Park Heights Ave. and gave her endorsement to Carl Stokes for mayor."

Scott Erickson -- DOWN -- For Dr. Death (0-4), spring training has bled into the regular season. Pitching on three days' rest was a hoped-for panacea.The A-Bomb -- DOWN -- The Orioles will pay $65 million over five years for Albert Belle's bat. How much more for some glove?Media coverage -- UP -- Sports Illustrated, ESPN, The Sporting News and the notorious "Baltimore media." They all want a piece of this team. The first three weeks prove that fact is stranger than fiction.Tom Trebelhorn -- UP -- Orioles minor-league director -- and former Milwaukee Brewers skipper -- is this week's manager-in-waiting.

Almost no one thinks they mean much in the long run, but every candidate wants as many as possible. Endorsements, that is -- the Beanie Babies of modern politics.Every office seeker collects them feverishly, hoping that support from a union, an elder statesmen or a popular elected official will mean votes on Election Day.But are those hopes warranted?If the Maryland State Teachers Association endorses Gov. Parris N. Glendening today as expected, it will not come as a surprise; the governor has had the teachers' support sewn up for years.

In 1995, 763 children under age 9 were murdered in the United States, according to the most recent FBI statistics available. This means that, on average, two children in this age bracket are murdered every day.Yet most of us know little, if anything, about these children or the circumstances of their deaths. Local newspapers and television news may cover individual incidents, but rarely are these stories picked up by national media.Recent coverage of the murder of JonBenet Ramsey is a clear exception - national news media have flocked to this story.

WASHINGTON -- In the current lull between the decisive presidential primaries and the Democratic and Republican conventions in August, it seems to be reflection time on how the news media are covering the campaign.Now comes a poll that says voters are just dying for more information about it but the press and television have let them down.A telephone survey of 2,007 registered voters by the Roper Center at the University of Connecticut, taken over a three-week period just prior to the Iowa precinct caucuses, found that 95 percent of those polled said they were ''extremely,'' ''very'' or ''somewhat'' interested in the 1996 presidential election.

The unprecedented media coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial has raised a question in the mind of the public: Does our criminal-justice system serve society's best interest? Bearing in mind the system's function, which is to seek the truth, let us look at some of the procedural safeguards and ask whether they might be modified.* Free press vs. fair trial. Excessive media coverage creates complications for both the prosecution and the defense. The pervasive publicity causes juries to be sequestered, which, according to conventional wisdom, is to the detriment of the defense.

Last year I served on a panel of media representatives and PR folks from nonprofit organizations. We were charged with responding to questions about publicity for nonprofits from our opposing viewpoints. What surprised me was the degree of unanimity between the two groups.Yes, of course, there was the obligatory complaint about the nonprofit sector not getting enough attention in the media. But, beyond that, nonprofit insiders and journalists seemed to agree on what needs to be done to attract more and better attention for nonprofits.

Judges are gods in their courtrooms.They can be overruled by other judges in other courtrooms later on, but on their own turf they are supreme beings.The trouble comes, however, when judges bump up against the media.And that's because the media recognize no gods but themselves.Operating under no written nor universally agreed-upon rules, the media are used to doing what they wish when they wish it.So it is no surprise that Superior Court Judge Lance Ito, who presides over the O. J. Simpson trial, has already clashed with the press.

AN OLD Richter cartoon from the New Yorker shows a defendant and his lawyer standing before a judge in a courtroom. The judge says:"Since you've already been convicted by the media, I imagine we can wrap this up pretty quickly."Ah, if only that were so. But as the O. J. Simpson trial demonstrates conclusively, media coverage of a case does nothing to speed things up. Nor, I would add, does it prejudice the case against an accused.Judge Lance Ito, Simpson's judge, has been warning potential jurors to avoid exposure to the media.

Nobel for TitoMarshall Tito, retrospectively should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for having kept the peace in Yugoslavia (Bosnia) for so many years after World War II.=1 Certainly no one else has been able to do it.Joseph DavidsonColumbiaMedia on HubbleThe following is an effort to highlight the media's lack of enthusiasm for the recent outstanding success of the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission.Prior to the mission, the media was consumed with the notion of impending failure, forecasting a dark and grim future for NASA following anything short of a total success.

Media coverage of the presidential race has not always been glowing for Barack Obama, but it has clearly been negative for John McCain, according to a survey of newspapers, Internet and TV news outlets since the end of the national political conventions. Slightly less than one-third of the stories about Obama were negative, while more than one-third were positive and about the same number were neutral or mixed. More than half of the stories about McCain cast him in a negative light, while fewer than two in 10 were positive, according to Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Anyone remember the donor who gave all that lacrosse equipment to Patterson High School last June? Anyone? I didn't think so. Even I couldn't remember - and I was really paying attention at the time. Had to look it up. Turns out, the benefactor was AT&T. The communications giant was corporate sponsor of the 2007 NCAA lacrosse championships, held at M&T Bank Stadium over the Memorial Day weekend. The company collected used equipment from fans, as well as new equipment from exhibitions and demonstrations at the tournament, then gave it to Patterson High.

Historic. Picturesque. Quaint. Charming. The chattering classes that descended on Annapolis for the Middle East peace conference relied on such doting adjectives as much as video images of the choppy Severn River and giant trees in full fall splendor. Reporters around the world gushed in the run-up to Tuesday's talks about the brick roads of the state's colonial capital, its colorful 300-year-old rowhouses and celebrated status in sailing circles. For anyone unfamiliar with the terrain, it might have seemed plucked from a children's storybook.

Frankly, I didn't know college baseball was such a hot media commodity, though I did watch the gripping Cal State Fullerton vs. UCLA super-regional playoff game on ESPN2 on Sunday night. The National Collegiate Athletic Association has become so protective of its rights deal that an NCAA official revoked the credential of a Louisville Courier-Journal reporter and ejected him from the press box on Sunday for blogging from the University of Louisville baseball field during a super-regional game.

Crickett Goodall couldn't stop thinking about Barbaro yesterday. "I'm tired and I'm sore. I feel emotionally spent," said Goodall, executive director of the Maryland Horse Breeders Association. Her hollow feeling was shared by many in and beyond the sports world yesterday; a fair share of office and radio chatter centered on the fate of the horse who won the Kentucky Derby and then broke down Saturday in the Preakness Stakes. "It's very emotional for a lot of people," said Goodall, a horse owner herself.

My daughter, 6, takes swimming classes twice a week, dance classes once a week, and wants to play on a soccer team. Should we add soccer to her schedule, or wait? - Rebecca Clifford, Baltimore I think it is great that your daughter wants to experience all of these things. Whether she can handle all of this is a decision only you can make. At 6, it might be a challenge to keep her focused on all of these activities. I would suggest that you expose her to soccer in a more unstructured way. Maybe put together a gathering of her friends in the park over the weekend where the kids can kick the ball around and have fun. We all know that kids can be fickle and something like this will help you determine whether or not her interest is for real.

A GOVERNMENT that is of the people, by the people and for the people allows those same people to view its workings -- as a matter of democracy and accountability. That's part of the underpinning for an effort this week by the American Society of Newspaper Editors to encourage open government, through more public meetings and greater accessibility by citizens to government information. The effort is called Sunshine Week, to shed light on the need to allow more access and provide more government scrutiny.

PHILADELPHIA - Allen Iverson was relaxed. Wearing a Philadelphia Sixers sweat suit, accented with his dazzling array of platinum and diamond jewelry, the man known as "The Answer" was ready to speak his mind. If Tawanna Iverson was nervous, she never let it show - although this was clearly not her scene. Despite being married to one of the country's most popular athletes, she always has been more comfortable in the background, away from the white-hot glare that has been a fixture in her husband's life almost since the moment they met as high school students in Virginia.

School employees deserve higher pay There was an uprising in Annapolis three weeks ago. There was no media coverage, no public outcry and no megaphones. But approximately 150 employees of the Anne Arundel County Board of Education gathered at a meeting to voice their great disappointment and frustration with the board's decision to not grant a small salary enhancement to their already sub-standard paychecks. The Secretaries and Assistants Association of Anne Arundel County (SAAAAC) spent the last year trying to negotiate a contract that would reward the employees they represent with the addition of an another "step" to their salary scale.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs has chosen Sun staff writer David Folkenflik as the winner of the first Paul Mongerson Prize for Investigative Reporting on the Media. Folkenflik, The Sun's television writer, will be cited in Washington today for his stories discrediting a report by Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera on a "friendly fire" incident in Afghanistan. "Everybody criticizes the media, but almost no one makes the effort to critically examine the flaws in particular news stories," said Robert Lichter, director of the center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization that studies news and entertainment media.