Media Coverage

She's one of the transgender community's most passionate advocates. Yet New Hope plastic surgeon Christine McGinn has an equally intense suspicion of the news media even as she relies on them to get her message heard. "There is so much ignorance out there about transgendered people," says McGinn, one of half a dozen transgender men and women profiled in Trans, a documentary screening Sunday as part of Philadelphia QFest and one of an unusually large crop of transgender films at the annual lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender film festival.

A Mormon official called media coverage of the church biased and sloppy in an open letter sent yesterday to reporters covering the 2002 Winter Games. While most news reports from Salt Lake City have been fair, the letter said, others are "full of arrant nonsense and prejudice" and prove that Mormons are still as persecuted as they were when they fled to Utah in 1847. Also, the church criticized a Denver Post column mocking Mormonism and the Olympics. The piece was pulled from the paper's Web site and an apologetic column was planned for today.

BERNARD Hopkins should have his license pulled for saying "I would never let a white boy beat me. " He thinks his excuse that he's just trying to sell tickets means something. So what if his company CEO, trainer and best friend are white? Where are the good reverends after this blatant show of racism? Why aren't they picketing and calling for his job? Why wasn't there extensive, over-the-top media coverage? I'm not a boxing fan, but why should one side be punished for this kind of talk and not the other?

MICHELLE MALKIN, in her March 4 column, counts the stories about Danny Pearl's tragic death to make a bogus argument about media hostility toward religion. Three thousand people die in the World Trade Center, the most closely covered story in decades. Millions in Africa die anonymously of AIDS every year. Is it because the African AIDS victims were devout and the Sept. 11 victims were heathens? Malkin's methods show far more obvious biases against foreigners, non-whites and the poor.

Was Phil Spector actually guilty of the Feb. 3, 2003, murder of Lana Clarkson? That question was posed repeatedly by the media in increasing tones of hysteria over the six years it took for Spector to be tried, retried, found guilty, and sentenced to serve 19 years to life in prison. It's raised yet again in Phil Spector , a fascinating, maddening, and ultimately unsatisfying 90-minute biopic starring Al Pacino as the music producer and Helen Mirren as one of his attorneys, Linda Kenney Baden.

Pretrial publicity will prevent Patrick Alexi McCarthy, a suspect in a killing at a King of Prussia motel last fall, from getting a fair trial, his lawyer said yesterday. Extensive media coverage of Anna Nicole Fowler's death dictates that McCarthy, 22, of Norristown, should be tried outside Montgomery County or that a jury be brought in from another area, said McCarthy's lawyer, Frank Genovese. The body of the 19-year-old woman was found in a Motel 6 on Oct. 6, 2004. McCarthy was charged on Oct. 20 with raping and killing Fowler before taking her ATM card, credit cards and car. Video surveillance from three cash machines showed McCarthy trying to withdraw money from or walking near the machines, police said.

Australia got lucky. Cathy Freeman got lucky, too. That's the message from here-you-see-her-now-you-don't French track star Marie-Jose Perec, who resurfaced in France long enough to contend she would have stolen Freeman's thunder had she not fled Australia a few days before the 400-meter race. "I think I would have run less than 49 seconds," she said. Freeman, of Aboriginal descent, won, unchallenged down the stretch, in 49.11. "I have never been afraid of Freeman, and I'm still not afraid of Freeman," Perec told the French sports newspaper, L'Equipe.

A Superior Court judge yesterday denied a motion to move the trial of Charles E. Reddish, who is charged with the 1991 murder of Cherry Hill resident Yeda Sharon Rosenthal. The jury-selection process is scheduled to begin Sept. 17 in state Superior Court in Camden County. In denying the motion, Judge Frank M. Lario rejected arguments from defense attorney Kevin Lewis that media coverage of Reddish, who is serving a life sentence for a different murder, has made it impossible to select an impartial jury from this area.

I RECENTLY attended a family function where I saw my cousin, Sharon Conroy. Although the family was busy "catching up," we were all aware someone was missing - Sean Patrick Conroy. We listened in amazement as we were updated on the recent hearing held to set dates for declassification of his alleged assailants from adults to juveniles. To Sharon's surprise, she was seated among the alleged assailants. No notification of the release of the accused on bail. No media coverage, and, what's worse, there has never been any photo ID of the "adult" assailants in any of the media coverage.

The news of the deaths of two young and promising athletes was tragic and disheartening. It was disconcerting that both died as a result of drug abuse. Yet, somehow, the media coverage of their deaths seems to have compounded the tragedy. Seeing the news reports, in the pit of my stomach I felt an injustice. Perhaps the media were compelled to report the deaths in such a sensational manner because the two were well-known athletic figures. For days, that's all I saw flashed on television screens and in newspapers.

In the last week, the story became why the national press isn't covering the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell's West Philadelphia abortion clinic and the alleged horrors that occurred within. Gosnell is charged with eight homicides - the deaths of seven newborns and 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, a healthy Nepalese refugee who came to Gosnell's Women's Medical Center seeking an abortion and died from a drug overdose. A lot of mea culpas and hand-wringing occurred in the national press while covering one of its absolute favorite subjects: itself.

Was Phil Spector actually guilty of the Feb. 3, 2003, murder of Lana Clarkson? That question was posed repeatedly by the media in increasing tones of hysteria over the six years it took for Spector to be tried, retried, found guilty, and sentenced to serve 19 years to life in prison. It's raised yet again in Phil Spector , a fascinating, maddening, and ultimately unsatisfying 90-minute biopic starring Al Pacino as the music producer and Helen Mirren as one of his attorneys, Linda Kenney Baden.

RE: "UNBELIEVABLE" (letter, Feb. 28) I am a Philadelphia Police Officer who has worked for the last 12 years in the heart of a high-rate crime area. I personally worked with Lt Josey. I respect him as a man, and as a hard-working, highly decorated and respected supervisor. Unless I missed something, I nor the public got to see the video from beginning to end. We saw a small portion of what was several hours of crowds, noise and thrown bottles; intoxicated, uncooperative people; excessive screeching of brakes and car fumes.

This originally appeared on Ellen Gray's blog, ellengray.tv. I'm almost afraid to add one word to the story of Friday's Connecticut school shootings for fear of adding to the wealth of the day's misinformation. But having spent much of the afternoon watching what passed for coverage of this horror, I can't help but be struck by how little television news has learned since Columbine about these things. As I write this, there are conflicting reports about the identity of the shooter, the location in which another body, said to be the shooter's mother, was found and other things that some networks sounded pretty sure about an hour or so ago. I've seen multiple reruns of an interview with a remarkably well-spoken little girl whose interrogation by a reporter, aired on CNN, would have been described as "leading the witness," if it took place in a courtroom.

CHICAGO - Here's a benefit of the housing bust: It has created a generation of young Americans who are more knowledgeable about homeownership than their baby-boomer parents were at their age. Those between ages 18 and 35 still want to own a home, and view homeownership as an indicator of success, according to a recent survey by Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate. But they'll buy only when they're sure they're ready for the responsibility - a sign of maturity from a group that often is stereotyped as being fiscally irresponsible and maintaining a less-than-stellar work ethic.

THE PRESIDENTIAL debates had no questions about the environment. I did hear about the future of our families, but Earth is shaping up with no future. Drilling for oil was a pretty big discussion in one debate, but only more drilling. Bacteria and virus are thriving, droughts are becoming more severe, temperatures are rising at an alarming rate, yet no candidate wants to discuss these issues. Studying to become an environmental scientist in college, I know my job outlook is good, but for all the wrong reasons.

There's so much to see in and around our nation's capital, but often so little time to take it all in. To be sure, the White House, the Capitol, and the Smithsonian museums, along with the monuments, tend to top most itineraries. But, with a bit of research and some planning, you can also get in plenty of other fascinating stops. Here are a few.   The Newseum Located on Pennsylvania Avenue at Sixth Street NW on the National Mall, this striking $450 million glass-and-stone structure that opened in 2008 chronicles nearly five centuries of news history.

Andy Reid closed all practices to reporters for the rest of this season. The Eagles typically allow reporters to watch most of practice on Thursdays and Fridays, but for competitive reasons, Reid said, he decided for the first time in his 14 seasons as head coach to close those practices. Reporters will be permitted to watch the NFL-mandated first 10 minutes of practice as they always have on Wednesdays. That period is allotted mostly to allow television cameramen and photographers to shoot the team.

She's one of the transgender community's most passionate advocates. Yet New Hope plastic surgeon Christine McGinn has an equally intense suspicion of the news media even as she relies on them to get her message heard. "There is so much ignorance out there about transgendered people," says McGinn, one of half a dozen transgender men and women profiled in Trans, a documentary screening Sunday as part of Philadelphia QFest and one of an unusually large crop of transgender films at the annual lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender film festival.

The Sandusky case was more than a media circus; it may have been a story that the media (at least in the public eye) got right. Television, radio, and newspapers told the story fairly, people seem to think, and for many thousands, social media provided a forum for venting, an encyclopedia, and a community. On Saturday, many were citing the comprehensiveness and fairness of coverage, far different from public opinion in the fall, when the first blitz of stories struck some as a rush to judgment, and a factor in the firing and death of former Pennsylvania State University football coach Joe Paterno.