Dec 1, 2004

Rachel Buchman, a reporter at Philadelphia's WHYY, resigned earlier this week after leaving a seething voice mail at the offices of Laptoplobbyist.com, a Virginia-based conservative website. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the group circulated Buchman's message, which advised the org's members that "God hates you and He wants to kill your children... You should all burn in hell," via e-mail after it learned that she worked at WHYY. "It was a personal matter that was turned into a public issue," Buchman said. "Rather than call my journalistic integrity into question, I decided to resign for personal reasons." (registration req., via Romenesko)
The Supreme Court has denied the American Family Association's request for a review of a lower-court decision that upheld the FCC's point system. (PDF, p. 4, see "04-539.") AFA had argued that the point system, which settles competing applications from noncommercial broadcasters for frequencies, unfairly favored pubcasters over religious broadcasters.
The New York Times covers Tavis Smiley's departure from NPR. "We would argue that there's more to be done, but his show was evidence that we were accomplishing it," says David Umansky, NPR's interim v.p. for communcations.