CNN made two scrupulous decisions before the tragedy in Mumbai. Both illustrating to the nation and the world the capacity of television news to be more than, as Edward R. Murrow put it, "Wires and a Box."

If the other handful of mostly entertainment networks owning America's major conduits...

How to make sure your vote is counted. It is up to American citizens to do their own reporting and their own investigations. We have learned the Mass media will not watch out for us. Here's how to insist on a democratic election by your own pro-active means.

A journalist learns picking questions carefully is one of the most important tenants of the job.

On this particular day, the object of my inquiry was the biggest, meanest, mood-altered, high maintenance-billionaire- bully around. What motivates a man like that? And why did such specimens seem to be...

How in the world can this happen? How in the world can citizens remain ensconced
in their houses watching American idol...when a true American, who should be idolized, is getting arrested
for nothing more than asking a few questions.

Amy Goodman, who hosts one of...

Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus paraded endangered Asian elephants through Los Angeles streets while fools born every minute watched.

People were foolish -- or perhaps naïve -- because all the Asian elephants have been exposed to -- or have had full blown mycobacterium-tuberculosis.

Several of them have fought...

Do we want our daughters pretty in pink?

This story took a week to ferment and bubble to the surface of my psyche. It is directed at women, and it's about a stupid news magazine cover that should not mean anything -- but for deeply complicated reasons it does.

The...

I wanted to write an old-fashioned letter to both of you. I wanted to put pen to paper so you could each see I have a school- teacher's handwriting. It can be clean, precise, truthful and sometimes even amusing. I am not a threat. There is no anger in me.

In 2003 when I was working as an anchor for a San Francisco television station, anchors and reporters across the country were asked by the White House to refer to the Iraqi invasion as Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).

We were asked to call the war in Afghanistan Operation Enduring Freedom...

Lions for Lambs and a velvet censorship exposed

The movie Lions for Lambs damn near brought on the Post-Traumatic- stress that is someday inevitable for most reporters. Our eyes have to comprehend images that can never be erased and any sane person would never commit to a job that...

My next door neighbors are watching Chinese television. I self-consciously look up from time to time for a peek at them as they stare at Chinese news learning of the country they once fled. I watch with admiration and a thimble full of envy. Three generations under the same roof...

When Katie Couric was given the title of "America's Sweetheart" it was a death knell. America relishes devouring its sweethearts.

If the news magazines and newspapers are correct, Katie Couric's career at CBS, much like Dan Rather's, is toast. But the last chapters of this complex and revealing human...

A little girl wiggles uncontrollably as she waits for the elephants to come out while sitting in the stands under the big tent. A bow in her hair, and her new glittery shoes on her feet. She's in her Sunday finest because the self proclaimed, "Greatest Show on...

Several experienced Bay Area reporters were "let go" this week. This is a national trend in local television news that can only hurt a democracy.

Wake up, dear friends.

Your local news has the money to buy a helicopter and install expensive high definition, but not the money to...

Tonight you can watch the mother lode of reality shows. It's called Bad Voodoo's War, and it airs on PBS' Frontline. Bad Voodoo's War is the story of a platoon of 30 soldiers in Iraq armed with both military might and camcorders. Cameras are attached to their Humvees and carried...

Why are we so concerned about hookers?

To start with, our puritanical nation loves a good sex scandal. Sure beats talking about the war, or doing any real reporting. Americans can talk about sex 'til the Viagra runs out -- or longer.

But there's some stinkin'-thinkin' in the sad and...

Dear anchor woman in the bikini,

I am sorry, but I am determined NOT to commit your name to memory, or should I say mammary.

I am the reporter who wrote the story about the United States quietly ignoring a United Nations treaty on discrimination. The treaty was supposed...

On Friday, at a United Nations meeting in Geneva, the United States broke a series of legal promises. Keeping those promises would have proved extremely embarrassing to the United States government by pointing out that human rights abuses are being committed here at home, and at U.S. military installations abroad....

Dear Mr. Obama,

I purchased one of those online ministerial certificates, so I feel I have the moral authority to hence-forth call you Caucasian. So, now that you are officially white, will you stop calling yourself black!

See the stinkin-thinkin in that? My point is this labeling of a...

Will the spies come out of the closet?

The president must be happier than a pig in slop tonight. Since he and I are both originally from Texas, I assume I can use that colloquialism. Today the Senate voted to broaden the governments spy powers and legally protect the communications...

The dumbest question on earth turned out to be the only pertinent one.

I was sitting at the anchor desk in San Francisco when President Bush delivered the State of the Union of 2003. We all expected an update on Afghanistan and instead the president pulled the now famous bait...