The New York Times addresses an interesting question with regard to news staying “fresh”.

With such saturation coverage, news gets used up faster, decaying rapidly into what Russell Baker calls “the olds.” Public curiosity, let alone the public interest, is exhausted, and the mass media are quick to look for some new sensation even if that means leaving important issues unresolved.

They may be on to something. However, the opposite can also be observed as some stories, of relatively trivial nature, can get stuck in the cycle long after their usefulness as news has expired (i.e. Condit/Levy, Britney’s marriage, etc.)

USA Today reports on the under-representation of minorities in the the media and its impact on content and quality of the news we read.

Here’s an outstanding example of a story that has enormous implications for our domestic war on terror, but that gets little play in mainstream media.

As developments in the affair involving Amb. Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame proceed, a true media dilemna arises.

Plame’s identity as a CIA operative was alledgedly disclosed to the media by White House staffers and an independant counsel has been appointed to determine how this came about and if any laws were broken. It is a violation of the law to break the cover of covert operatives and suspicion has fallen on Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

National security issues are certainly in play when CIA personnel identities are compromised. It not only has an obvious effect on the person involved, it also risks revealing sources and methods that can harm operations and other people known to associate with the outed agent. But courts forcing reporters to reveal their sources presents a sticky situation for first amendment advocates and must be dealt with carefully. In this case, however, it could be argued that this is not a case of a reporter and his source, but a political propagandist planting a story with a press accomplice in violation of the law.