Undercover video-taping of farm animal abuse...

...has prompted "food libel" or "food disparagement" laws in a dozen states, aimed at protecting powerful agribusiness interests that apparently have much to hide. Here's a video report from U.C. Berkeley News21 students.

Election 2008: Mayhill Fowler's citizen journalism for HuffPost's "Off the Bus" project

Mayhill Fowler says she didn't hide that she was recording ex-President Clinton's angry words ("sleazy" . . . "slimy" . . . "dishonest" . . . "scumbag") about a Vanity Fair reporter, while he greeted voters in public as he campaigned for his wife in June 2008. BUT Clinton obviously did not know Fowler was a HuffPost "citizen journalist." Should she have ID'd herself? (She clearly got a more honest take from Clinton than if he'd known she was a journalist.)

Shouldn't public figures know nowadays that anything said in public -- especially rants (or racism) -- will be recorded and available forever? Exhibits A and B.

Mayhill Fowler's earlier reporting scoop that launched "Bittergate" uproar. The Bittergate of 2012 campaign: "47%-gate."

Mainstream TV News Can Have Standardized Content . . . AND FORMAT

A BBC correspondent lampoons and deconstructs the sameyness (and cliches) of  mainstream TV news reports.

NBC News Called the Virginia Governors Race a "Stark Choice"

The Daily Show on Comedy Central called it a non-choice and much worse.

Nikki Finke locked out of Deadline.com

Nikki Finke, a leading reporter on Hollywood, started the independent website Deadline.com in 2006, sold it to Jay Penske's Mail.com company for a reported $14 million in 2009 (while continuing as editor-in-chief, and has now just been kicked out of the outlet she founded and built.

Edward Snowden Mainstream Media Coverage

Column I wrote on how some in mainstream media reacted to Snowden and his revelations of widespread surveillance of Americans.

Blogger Took Ethical Action

Here's an example of a blogger acting professionally and ethically. Blogger Ken Krayeske, who famously questioned University of Connecticut's basketball coach about his huge taxpayer-paid salary -- announced in Oct. 2009 that he wouldn't be covering Hartford City Hall because his girlfriend had a job there. If he'd disclosed the relationship and kept covering City Hall, that  might have been sufficient from an ethical standpoint.