In 2008, I wrote a few blog posts about a young mother from Florida, “ branded by Nancy Grace on national television as the worse mother in America”. No, I am not talking about Casey Anthony. I am talking about Erin Markes. She had a son with a rare birth defect, and Nancy Grace “ridiculed and branded a criminal before all the facts about her son’s medical condition were known…The State Attorney’s Office eventually dropped the charges. The boy died in hospice care two weeks later. Markes has remarried and has a healthy baby. Nancy Grace never apologized.”

Now, I must admit, I have not followed the media circus around Casey Anthony. All I really know is that a jury, when presented the evidence, found Casey Anthony not guilty of what she had been accused of by Nancy Grace.

But that was last week’s news. This week, the big story is the unraveling of parts of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The ‘hacking scandal” has already cost the jobs of quite a few people and we’ll see what is left to be played out.

Meanwhile, the discussion about how to understand and resolve the financial problems of our country and the world seem caught in a game of he said, she said, where the focus is on placing blame, scoring political points, and not doing anything to make our country or our world a better place.

All of this brings me back to the SPJ Code of Ethics,

Seek Truth and Report It…Minimize Harm…Act Independently…Be Accountable