Dave Zirin: This is the Olympics as nothing less than a neoliberal Trojan horse. Seeing the queen sit in observance of pantomime protests and Cameron cheer the very NHS he aims to slash is actually quite perverse.
The Romney Campaign’s Situational Demagoguery
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Joseph Palermo: Worse than Swift Boating, worse than Willie Horton, Mitt Romney is running the most craven, dishonest, and hypocritical campaign we’ve seen in contemporary American politics.
Social Media: Meaning or Madness?
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Charles Hayes: Increasingly I see young people (and some not so young) spending their days flitting this way and that, like subatomic particles being moved by unseen forces, while focused on a hand-held gadget.
The Fluff Factor: Today’s Journalism
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Walter Brasch: Today’s news co-hosts, known as anchors, are usually a tandem of a wise middle-aged older man and his pretend trophy wife, both of whom spend more time in Make-up and Hair Dressing than they ever spent in journalism classes.
Stop-and-Frisk Citizen Journalists
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Sharon Kyle: Do citizens have a right to monitor the behavior of law enforcement? What about citizen journalists? The case of citizen Joseph “Jazz” Hayden may be one of police retaliation. What do you think?
Want Better Press? Be Better Press
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Stephen Box: Be the story, tell the story, and cultivate a relationship with local journalists so that they call you when they are digging for information
Advertising, Our National Values, and Truth and Beauty
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Walter Moss: What is it about our nation’s values that inclines us to be so accepting of advertising and all the falsity and ugliness that comes with it?
Koch Brothers: The Least of Our Worries
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Robert Illes: But in many ways worse are the watery “liberals” on, say, MSNBC, especially Chris Matthews, whose main interest seems self-serving, to maintain the election as seeming like a tight horse race.
Cory Booker No Millennial, Should Not Launch Millennial Website
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Nomiki Konst: Why do millennials need to be saved by non-millennials? Our generation’s unique greatness is in part due to our self-starting, self-sufficient, entrepreneurial spirit.
MO Bitter Blues in the Jeff City Rotunda or Rush Limbaugh’s Big Head
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Kathleen Peine: It’s not the Hall of Universally Loved Missourians,” House Speaker Steven Tilley told the Kansas City Star in regard to the placement of the Rush Hudson Limbaugh III bust in the Missouri Capitol. “It’s the Hall of Famous Missourians.”
The Unembarrassable Network
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Berry Craig: The folks at Fox aren’t real newshounds. They’re rabble-rousing hacks in the tradition of the country’s old-time partisan press.
Neil Munro’s Incivility
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Karen FInney: Rather than helping to further understanding about the policy being announced, Munro engaged in exactly the kind of provocative-for-the-sake-of-it “journalism” that cheapens our national debate on important issues.
Losing My Prince
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Charley James: The only thing that’s possibly more devastating than finding yourself on the street is having to let a friend take care of a beloved pet because you are homeless.
Charley James Is Back
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Sharon Kyle & Dick Price: At last report as of this morning, Charley is still day by day able to get a night’s lodging, while he pitches writing ideas to editors. We encourage to catch up with Charley’s contributions and send whatever you can afford his way, as we have done. You can either send him funds directly to him through PayPal or send them to us and we’ll pass them all to him.
Unequal Political Coverage in the Media
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Unequal Political Coverage few years ago, I met Sue Wilson a media reform activist who was promoting her awarding winning documentary, “Broadcast Blues” at the annual L.A. Media Reform Summit. Sue, who has been a foot soldier in the battle to take back the media, was on a campaign that continues today. Sue believes media [...]
Climate-Change Denier Group Feels the Heat
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Steven Mikulan: As much as Heartland may wish to deny certain fundamentals of science, there are signs that its gonzo billboard ads have created a classic cause and effect backlash among some supporters.
How Did TV Remember the ’92 L.A. Riots?
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Jill Edy: In the immediate aftermath of the 1992 riots, a struggle broke out over naming them. Some called them the “Rodney King riots,” but others objected that this term suggested King was responsible for what had happened.
Right-Wing Propaganda: False Equivalents
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Steve Hochstadt: These two conservative propagandists know that the average reader, especially those who want to believe conservative ideas, won’t or can’t follow the trail backwards from their misleading writings to the real facts. They don’t seek truth, they obscure it.
Did O’Reilly Really Call Robert Reich a Commie?
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Robert Reich: What makes America’s current polarization remarkable isn’t the severity of our disagreements but our utter lack of engagement debating them.
Ted Nugent: Rock’s Village Idiot
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Tom Degan: Nugent’s antics have nothing to do with “freedom of speech”. Inciting any of the dim-witted masses to assassinate the president of the United States is beyond foolhardy and reactionary.
Sarah Palin and Mama Grizzlies: Feminism without Feminists
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Julie Driscoll: Palin’s femininity is one that is recognisable to most women: she’s the kind of broad who speaks on behalf of other broads but appears not to like them very much.
Black Mathematicians: The Kind of Problems They Wish Didn’t Need Solving
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Jonathan Farley: The National Review’s John Derbyshire pointed out that no black mathematician had ever won the Fields medal. There are a few reasons for that.
Reality, News Perception, and Accuracy
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Walter Brasch: Adequate reporters get their facts from people in authority; the great reporters know truth is probably known by the secretaries, custodians, and other workers.
C-SPAN Is America
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Brent Budowsky: While our politics have become a shouting match of pander and slander, name-calling and talking points, celebrity media and instant misanalysis, C-SPAN shines as an exemplar of what a free press in a free nation should be.
Nobody Really Cares About What You Write Except Other Nuts Like You
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Berry Craig: This old reporter turned history teacher finds anonymous bloggers of any political persuasion eminently ignorable. In my book, no name equals no credibility.
Most Read Led by The Fix’s “What Killed Andrew Breitbart?
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This week’s top 10 most read was led by “What Killed Andrew Breitbart?” by Maer Roshan and Hunter R. Slaton of The Fix, billed as the world’s leading website about addiction and recovery.
Anatomy of an Apology
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Steve Hochstadt: Some people talk nasty and nastier, hoping to prevent the next Sandra Fluke from expressing herself. Bigmouths thrive in the silence of others.
Lanny Davis Defends Limbaugh, Smears Liberals
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Brent Budowsky: Where I take offense is when Lanny smears, demeans, misrepresents and ridicules liberals as McCarthyites when they (perish the thought) call for a boycott of Limbaugh sponsors.
Clear Channel’s Problem Doesn’t Stop at Rush, John and Ken
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Anthony Samad: Clear Channel has a problem, and it goes far beyond the rationales being given for John and Ken’s, and Rush’s, inappropriateness.
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We Don’t Need a Law to Stop Cyber-Cowards
Berry Craig: But if this old reporter were a blogsite boss he’d exercise his First Amendment right to make bloggers tack their names on what they write or they wouldn’t get posted.