Infomaniac: WeBlog

Teele and DeFede

(I'm finding more and more as the day goes on. New links being added at bottom of this post.)

As expected, there's discussion of this story in local blogs, giving a different perspective beyond the journalistic ones I pointed to yesterday evening. The Cuban bloggers, who have strong feelings about DeFede, have lots to say about The Herald, its coverage of this story, and the journalists who are signing the petition of support for DeFede:
From The 26th Parallel:

"Let's get to the good first: Their firing of Jim DeFede was the right thing to do. What DeFede did was ethically wrong, and of course illegal.
...What's really disappointing to me is the relatively large number of people who've signed the letter, including several current Herald reporters whose work I've been reading for quite a few years now."

'Conductor' at Cuban-American Pundits has a different take:

"Now, I'm not a fan of Mr. Defede. He has been consistently against Cuban-Americans and I rarely agree with anything he writes, but that's entirely besides the point. I think in firing Defede, the Herald, embodies journalistic hypocrisy. If the conversations that were recorded, were part of an investigation to a White House cover up like Watergate, then I'm sure they would not have fired him."

George Moneo at Babalu Blog reacts to those commentators that suggest opposition to DeFede from the Cuban community may have fueled the firing:

"It's the fault of the Cubans in Miami! The Mafia, los gusanos! Man, are we powerful or what!? I cannot tell you how much this has helped my self-esteem. I feel... well, omnipotent. Thanks, Mr. Rivers, for clearing that up."

As far as the other blogs, CriticalMiami, is well, very critical of The Herald's role in this whole story. Read it yourself, I'm not quoting it.

The conservative Peer Review links to the on-line petition, and signs it.

The comments on the online petition are also pretty heated, and interesting. Among the commenters: Babalu Blog's Val Prieto.

For more reaction, stories in The Washington Post and the New York Times (registration required).

And, in blogs outside of Florida, as this story resonates, it looks like it's going to attract the attention that other big media ethics stories got: interesting discussions in C aptain's Quarters, Reidblog, Mark in Mexico, for example. a Technorati search finds much, much more.

posted by liz at 2:03 PM