This NYT piece from Aug. 14 (I thought I'd be the last media blogger in the world to mention it) talks about the difficulty of assigning proportionality to image when covering a conflict like Lebanon.

On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart said cable news algebra works this way: A three-year war in Iraq has less news value than a 34-day war in Lebanon, but both mean shit compared to an apparent break in the 10-year-old JonBenet Ramsay case.

The news shows had a word for the Ramsay update, he said: "Oxygen." :)

The Beeb has a feature reviewing the Ramsay case -- and it happens to be the most-read story on the website right now. The NYT's look at the suspect's "confession" is on the home page.

Those are two relatively sober, high-quality news organizations. Whether the Ramsay case ever should have become as high-profile as it did is, to me, a moot point now.

The Globe and Mail's Guy Dixon had a story published Tuesday about InsidetheCBC.com, a blog about the Corpse by Corpse staff.

I'd been carrying around the Aug. 7-14 issue of the New Yorker for days and days, but on Tuesday night on the subway, I finally read Nicholas Lemann's critique of citizen journalism.

You can too by clicking here. Personally, I think every journalist interested in the topic should read it too.

Here is the raw version of a commentary I wrote for Digital Journal magazine way back in June 2005:

NYT public editor Byron Calame revisits the paper's decision to hold publication of the NSA eavesdropping story, which it may have had before the Nov. 2,  2004 election but didn't publish until Dec. 16, 2005.

Meredith Vieira wanted off the grueling track of ultra-big-time U.S. TV because she valued family more than career. Fifteen years later, she's making $10 million US per year hosting the most-watched morning show in America.

Now she finds herself asking if she's sold out. Other people frame it this way: Has she won?

Media organizations in South Africa say the say the Film and Publication Amendment Bill would mean that print and broadcast news would have to be pre-approved by government regulators.

Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, has decided to cut the budget of CJR Daily in an attempt to fund a subscription drive for the Columbia Journalism Review magazine.

The Beeb rounds up what the Brit papers are reporting in their Friday editions on Thursday's 'bomb plot' arrests.

If you go to this CTV.ca story and click on the Kathy Tomlinson video item, what you'll learn that it's not that easy to blow a plane out of the sky. Plenty of planes have survived small explosions with minimal loss of life.

(On the other hand, The Globe and Mail headlined one story: Liquid-based explosives could easily down airliners. The paper has a story on a previous al Qaeda plot known as Operation Bojinka, which sought to blow up airliners over the Pacific Ocean).

As such, some of the intonations from officials about "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" strike me as hyperbole. Had the 9/11 bombers hit lower on the World Trade Center towers or hit a half-hour later, they could have likely killed thousands more people than the roughly 3,000 they actually did.

However, the fanatics behind these plots are not stupid people (although fortunately for us, they aren't criminal masterminds either). One of these times, they will get "lucky" -- and mass tragedy on a scale even greater than 9/11 will ensue.

The one I still fear is a dirty bomb or suitcase nuke detonated in a world financial capital.

On The Daily Show Thursday night, senior carryonologist John Oliver said: "I'm afraid these terrorists have struck at what we in the West hold most dear: Our beverages.

"They resent our wide array of fluid refreshment options. We live in the most easily quenched part of the world, and they hate that."

In discussing what types of fluids are now banned from aircraft, Oliver said: "At what viscosity do we draw the line? Is custard a liquid? How about clotted cream ... and what about yogurt. My God, that's a Pandora's box. We know there's fruit at the bottom, but what else lurks there?"

Oliver noted that the human body is 75 per cent water. "You, me -- Everyone is a walking bomb!

"If I had it my way, they'd be setting up steam rooms at all security checkpoints to evaporate the threat!"

There's another issue: All the people involved were British citizens, which means Britain must not be a democracy. "For as you know, democracy is the only known antidote to extremism."

When Jonno asked what that means, Oliver replied: "It means regime change, Jon. America must topple the British government.

"And don't worry, because Tony Blair has already pledged full backing for the overthrow of himself."

Iraqi authorities took four Iraqi men into custody in connection with the Jan. 7 kidnapping of Jill Carroll, a young American journalist who had been freelancing for the Christian Science Monitor.

She was held for 82 days. Her interpreter was killed when she was grabbed in a west Baghdad neighborhood.

More at this BBC story.

As you may have heard, Reuters has cut a Beirut photographer loose for two cases of digital photo manipulation.

Gawker has one of the photos.

A Beeb editor, Steve Herrman, discusses the issue at the BBC editors' blog. He quotes Phil Coomes, the image editor for the Beeb website, as follows:

"Digital photography has altered the landscape of photojournalism like nothing before it, placing the photographers in total control of their output. All the news agencies have photo ethics policies, many of which are rooted in the days of film. The standard line is that photographers are allowed to use photo manipulation to reproduce that which they could do in the darkroom with conventional film.

"This usually means, colour balance, 'dodging and burning', cropping, touching up any marks from dust on the sensor and perhaps a little sharpening. If we are honest though, an accomplished darkroom technician could do almost anything and there are many historical examples of people being airbrushed from pictures.

"All this sounds fine until you look at the reality - one man’s colour balancing is another's grounds for dismissal.

"By definition a photograph is a crop of reality, it’s what the photojournalist feels is important. But it doesn't equate to the whole truth, and perhaps we just need to accept that."

Can someone remind me who said (words to the effect of): "A photo is accurate. It is not the truth." If one accepts the logic of that statement, then digitally editing a photo to enhance its accuracy should be acceptable. Adding something like more smoke should be out of bounds.

And it was! :)

I would have thought the rough-and-tumble years you spent in federal politics -- plus your time as a journalist and now as a blogger -- would have toughened you up, but apparently not.