Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
NEW YORK (AP) — Jake Tapper’s verbal tug-of-war with Vice President-elect Mike Pence last week illustrated a persistent style the CNN anchor is making his signature, and one that he hopes his colleagues take up, too. Tapper asked Pence eight times about the son of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the incoming administration’s pick as national…
“The interned Japanese were housed, fed, protected and cared for.” This is some kind of bullshit. On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times published two letters from readers arguing that the forced mass removal and incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II was necessary and justified. The letters, published in the paper’s print…
President-elect Donald Trump is about to inherit a newly empowered Voice of America that some officials fear could serve as an unfettered propaganda arm for the former reality TV star who has flirted for years with launching his own network. Buried on page 1,404 of the National Defense Authorization Act that passed last week is…
ONE OF THE intellectual gargoyles that has crawled out of Donald Trump’s brain is the idea that we should “open up” libel laws to make it easier to punish the media for negative or unfair stories. Trump also wants top officials to sign nondisclosure agreements, so they never write memoirs that upset the boss. Trump is…
A Warning for Americans From a Member of Pussy Riot – NYTimes.com. Source: A Warning for Americans From a Member of Pussy Riot – NYTimes.com
The Washington Post on Thursday night promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of U.S. news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The article by reporter Craig Timberg – headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” – cites a report by…
Here are some takeaways from the news about “fake news”: false stories propelled Donald Trump’s presidential victory, undermined the peace deal in Colombia, and contribute to ethnic violence in Myanmar. Facebook is to blame, with Twitter and Google distant abettors. Whatever you think of these conventional conclusions, fake news is causing us to close this…
.entry-header One of the themes that has emerged during the controversy over “fake news” and its role in the election of Donald Trump is the idea that Russian agents of various kinds helped hack the process by fueling this barrage of false news. But is that really true? In a recent story, the Washington Post…
Christiane Amanpour was honored with the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award for her extraordinary and sustained achievement in the cause of press freedom on November 22, 2016. The text of Amanpour’s acceptance speech, as prepared for delivery, is below. I never in a million years thought I would be up here on stage appealing for…
You can learn everything you need to know about the “alt-right” by looking at the man who popularized its name. Credit goes to Richard Spencer, head of the white supremacist National Policy Institute (NPI), and one of the country’s leading contemporary advocates of ideological racism. The weekend before Thanksgiving, Spencer keynoted an NPI conference in…