Mark Memmott
Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.
As the NPR Ethics Handbook states, the Standards & Practices editor is "charged with cultivating an ethical culture throughout our news operation." This means he or she coordinates discussion on how we apply our principles and monitors our decision-making practices to ensure we're living up to our standards."
Before becoming Standards & Practices editor, Memmott was one of the hosts of NPR's "The Two-Way" news blog, which he helped to launch when he came to NPR in 2009. It focused on breaking news, analysis, and the most compelling stories being reported by NPR News and other news media.
Prior to joining NPR, Memmott worked for nearly 25 years as a reporter and editor at USA Today. He focused on a range of coverage from politics, foreign affairs, economics, and the media. He reported from places across the United States and the world, including half a dozen trips to Afghanistan in 2002-2003.
During his time at USA Today, Memmott, helped launch and lead three USAToday.com news blogs: "On Deadline," "The Oval" and "On Politics," the site's 2008 presidential campaign blog.
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There are times when obscene words are heard, but they are rare. Editors balance respect for listeners against the news value of the language.
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Along with the words and phrases that still ring out 239 years later are less noticed turns of phrase. They say a lot about the messages Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers wanted to send.
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Hundreds of people died this month when an overloaded ship sank in the Mediterranean Sea. They were on the move, but never reached their destinations.
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When NPR correspondents report about that group, they try to make it clear that it is not a "state" in the standard sense of that word. This month's "Word Matters" conversation explains why.
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David Moyes lasted less than a season as manager of the English football (soccer) club. Longtime star player Ryan Giggs is filling in and says this is "the proudest moment" of his life.
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Divers have found no air pockets where passengers might have taken refuge. They have, however, retrieved more bodies. The number of confirmed deaths has topped 150. An equal number remain missing.
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Investigators are studying a piece of metal discovered on a beach in western Australia to see if it might be debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
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That follows 33 shootings the weekend before and 27 one week before that. As the weather is warming, the deadly incidents are on the rise again.
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Although the captain and some of the officers have been called cowards or worse, passengers say other crew members acted heroically. At least seven crew members died or are missing.
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President Park Geun-hye says the captain did little to help the hundreds on board escape. More than 60 bodies have been recovered. More than 230 people, most of them high school students, are missing.