The ten most read articles by LA Progressive’s readers in 2011 reflect both the breadth of our coverage and also several special focuses.
The Eyes Have It
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Steve Fine: Had the editors decided to use the original photograph instead, then they would have had a problem on their hands: a far too attractive image for the Occupy movement.
Fox News, Muslim Women, and Zucchini
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Julie Driscoll: Leave it to that bastion of “yellow journalism,” Fox “News” to plow forward with an absolutely unsourced article simply to further its anti-Muslim sentiments.
Sarah Palin on Herman Cain: “Boys Will Be Boys”
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Julie Driscoll: Call me crazy, but shouldn’t the “morality and values” party believe that cheating and lying and deceit and trashing of marital vows and violations of who knows how many biblical rules and regs shouldn’t be reduced to Sarah Palin’s “boys will be boys?”
A Letter to the Editor of the LA Times
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The following letter was written to the LA Times in response to their December 3, 2011 article, “Postscript: Digging into the Occupy L.A. ‘mess‘.” The writer, Scott Peer, also sent a copy to the LA Progressive. We are posting it with his permission: It’s not a huge surprise that The LA Times continues to slant [...]
Your Local Broadcast News Is Making Us Stupid
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Tina Dupuy: Let’s talk news. And where the majority of Americans – as in over 50 percent (by most estimates) – still get their news – from their local nightly news show. Any discussion about how unaware Americans are when it comes to news needs to have its finger pointed at the proper culprit: Your local broadcast.
Speaking for Myself
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Steve Hochstadt: The reinvigoration of our constitutional freedoms in my lifetime came from below, from ordinary citizens, from readers who wanted to end censorship by the powerful.
Let’s Occupy Together
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David Kristjanson-Gural: Corporate news stations present themselves as trustworthy and unbiased, but they are owned by large multinational corporations like General Electric and Westinghouse, and these are the folks that are benefitting from the policies that the protesters decry.
Ross Douthat’s Hit Job on JFK
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Joseph Palermo: Douthat practices the weird tactic, common among contemporary right-wingers, of criticizing whatever Democrat or “liberal” who is in their crosshairs from both the right and the left at the same time.
Fox News, the No Embarrassment Zone
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Berry Craig: A fierce anti-intellectualism fires much of the Fox faithful. They’re not troubled by the serial goofs and gaffes of GOP presidential hopefuls like Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry.
The Sanctimonious Scavengers of the Penn State Scandal
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Walter Brasch: Based upon the amount of newsprint and air time given to this story, you would swear that Paterno was guilty, arrested, and probably already convicted. The media almost forgot about Sandusky as they began piling on to Paterno.
Which Way Occupy LA?
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Margot Paez: The large group of American working class who stood on the corner of Spring and Temple with determination and hope, have disappeared. There are 500 tents at Occupy LA, and only five people standing on the corner on a given day.
The Triumph of Dogma, and a Sad Goodbye to David Frum
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Robert Reich: The American public doesn’t want or need to hear “representatives” from the so-called right or left. It wants insight into what’s best for America.
Occupy Wall Street: Separating Fact from Media
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Walter Brasch: Even the most oblivious recognize the protestors as a large cross-section of America. They are students and teachers; housewives, plumbers, and physicians; combat veterans from every war from World War II to the present.
The Revolution Will Be Livestreamed
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Lauren Steiner: Since the mainstream media, even MSNBC, is owned by large corporations representing the top 1%, we cannot count on them to serve as the check on government that our Founders intended the press to be.
Defying Skeptics, Occupy Wall Street is Winning Over Mainstream
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Randy Shaw: A surprising shift has occurred in mainstream attitudes toward the openly anti-corporate Occupy movement: after first ignoring and then downplaying the effort, skepticism has given way to praise.
Little Local News Coverage for Occupy America
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Sharon Kyle: Not a single camera or reporter from the local news stations was within view. I couldn’t believe that I stood witnessing this phenomenal movement without a hint of evidence that traditional media was documenting or reporting.
The Best Reality Show EVER!
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Tanya Acker: artisans of a certain Texas governor who yearns to be president think that there is “no significance” to the fact that said governor’s family leased a ranch named with a slur used to taunt African-Americans as they were hunted and lynched.
Profiles in Paranoia
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Berry Craig: Anonymous bloggers with paranoic predilictions see themselves as heroes, blowing the cover off “Comrade” Obama’s “secret FEMA concentration camps” and his “clandestine UN armies.”
Why Newspapers Rarely Mention Suicides
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Tina Dupuy: Suicide needs to be taken out of the closet. The idea that if we talk about suicide – if we read about it in the paper – it’ll be so tempting more people will kill themselves is ridiculous. It reeks of superstition. Censoring stories doesn’t save lives.
The Return of Sickie Dick
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Tom Degan: Does he really believe that he will be able to pull a fast one on history? That the ages will view him much in the same way Roosevelt and Churchill are viewed today. Yeah, he probably does. The only thing monumental about this homicidal twit is his arrogance.
New York Times Smacks Down Darrell Issa’s Demand
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Lee Fang: In responding, Dean Baquet, the assistant editor of the Times, debunked claims of factual inaccuracies listed by Issa spokesman concerning a major investigation it had published two weeks ago.
NPR’s Foxification of Ex-Gay Rhetoric
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Rev. Irene Monroe: My head spins at the thought of how Christian counseling services, like Dr. Marcus Bachmann’s, still get so much air time, especially, in spite of the voluminous information disputing the pseudo-science of “ex-gay” conversion therapies.
Politics, Reality Show Style
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Tina Dupuy: For the last two and a half years politics has been trash television. We’ve had right-wing stars staying relevant through mudslinging and shamelessness. The tea party wouldn’t be satisfied with just one Snooki. We’ve had fake stings by phony pimps and ideology-driven hoaxes. Astroturf is being sold as organic outrage.
‘Identity-Free Wusses’
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Berry Craig: Yet few pundits – print or online — pay any attention to “identity-free wusses.” They get ignored because no-name almost always equals no-credibility.
Glenn Beck Is Not the Voice of America
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Berry Craig: Beck will doubtless keep on spewing hate into his microphone. But he couldn’t get elected dog catcher, and he knows it. I trust the citizens of Norway know it, too.
Uncle Sam’s & John Bull’s Crimes Dwarf Murdoch’s Eavesdropping
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Sherwood Ross: Rupert Murdoch’s TNTW was only attempting to do in a small way what the governments of the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are doing big time every day.
The Murdoch Implosion
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Tom Degan: I have been desperately trying to write a poem about the train wreck that Rupert Murdoch’s life has become but I’ve run into a brick wall. Could somebody give me a word that rhymes with schadenfreude?
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Long-time LA Timesman Decries Media Concentration
Justin Chapman: The coming concentration of the media is probably a bigger threat to your civil liberties than anything the government’s doing right now, according to Tim Rutten