Covfefe chaos: What Trump’s typos say about his administration
Misspelled tweets and typos in press releases are becoming the norm under President Trump, but critics say it points to a pervasive carelessness in the White House.
CNN Profiles Former White House “Chief Calligrapher”
Today was the last day of the manuscript unit in my “History and Future of the Book” course. I wish I had come across this article a little sooner! “As calligraphers, we feel like we’re playing an integral role. The invitation sets the stage for the whole event. Calligraphers are helping, simply, to set the…
Mr. President, stop attacking the press
Reagan recognized that as leader of the free world, his words carried enormous weight, and he used them to inspire the unprecedented spread of democracy around the world. | President Trump does not seem to understand that his rhetoric and actions reverberate in the same way. He has threatened to continue his attempt to discredit…
McCain: Dictators ‘get started by suppressing free press’
“If you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press… And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.” — Republican Senator John McCain, in a Feb 2017 interview on…
Other than #StarTrek memes, my favorite part of the web is how it’s a rhetorical battleground for the fate of the free world.
Saturday, Donald Trump tweeted that he knew Flynn lied, and that’s why he “had to fire” him. Critics immediately raised concerns, noting that if Trump did in fact know Flynn had lied, then Trump’s request that FBI Director James Comey “let this go” amounts to an obstruction of justice. Sunday, Trump’s lawyer John Dowd told…
Local news is the building block of a national democracy.
Yesterday, I asked my students, “How many of you spent $4 on a cup of coffee in the last month? How many have spent that much to support local news?” “If people don’t get local news, they don’t know what’s going on in their community. If they don’t know what’s going on in their community,…
Did you share Russian fake news? Facebook, apparently unable to insert items directly in our feeds, will make you jump through hoops to find out.
Did you share fake news from Russia during the US Presidential election? Grudgingly following up on a Congressional order, Facebook will permit you to jump through hoops to find out. Because Facebook apparently does not have the technology to insert items of its choosing directly in user feeds, the social media company has helpfully provided…
Russian troll factory paid US activists to help fund protests during election
Russian trolls posing as Americans made payments to genuine activists in the US to help fund protest movements on socially divisive issues, according to a new investigation by a respected Russian media outlet. On Tuesday, the newspaper RBC published a major investigation into the work of a so-called Russian “troll factory” since 2015, including during…
Donald Trump’s chilling escalation of his war with the media
A journalist’s response to President Trump’s early morning caps-imbued assault on the FAKE news media. Let’s be clear about what Trump is suggesting here. He wants the Senate intelligence committee to open an investigation into the “Fake News Networks” to get to the bottom of why so much of the news is “just made up.”…
How We Found Tom Price’s Private Jets
Great behind-the-scenes story of the hard work that went into breaking the Tom Price private travel story. The first tip came from a casual conversation with a source back in May: Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price was using private jets for routine travel, possibly in violation of federal travel rules that allowed such flights…
British Politician begins reciting colonial-era Kipling poem in in Myanmar temple
After the UK ambassador cut off his recitation of a pro-colonial Kipling poem in a Maynmar temple, UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson said, “No? Good stuff.” The foreign secretary has been accused of “incredible insensitivity” after it emerged he recited part of a colonial-era Rudyard Kipling poem in front of local dignitaries while on an…
Teaching the First Amendment Freedoms
In an opening lecture, I briefly listed the five freedoms Americans are guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Then I moved on. I quizzed them the next week, and they didn’t do too well. They did a little better when I surprised them with a follow-up quiz. After that,…
On the Ethics of Rebranding a Former Trump Administration Official as an Amusing TV Personality
It’s also a disservice to readers to report on Spicer’s post-White House life and not mention how unusual and controversial his tenure was. This is a guy famous for meeting with reporters near the bushes on White House grounds, for coining the phrase “Holocaust centers,” for creating the necessity for courtroom sketch artists in the White House briefing…
Students Learning about First Amendment Freedoms
In an opening lecture for my journalism class, I listed the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. I’ve referred to the importance of the First Amendment several times, but I haven’t listed the freedoms in class. One week after the opening lecture, I asked students to list those freedoms on…
Teaching Snapshot: First Amendment Freedoms
Anti-globalism Is Common Factor in Social Media Conspiracy Theories, says UW Prof
Fascinating academic effort to find a pattern in apparently random conspiracy theories that regularly pop up in our infostreams during social crises. Experts usually dismiss them because they are so wild and unlikely, and have thus failed to notice their impact. Starbird’s insight was to map the digital connections between all this buzzing on Twitter…
“The threat is no longer simply from government censorship.”
After using examples from Warsaw and Prague, the 2007 edition of my journalism textbook predicts: The threat is no longer simply from government censorship. With new technology, government is more likely to subvert the press by trying to discredit its integrity and dilute its influence. It has more tools to do that in the twenty-first…
Judge orders Montana congressman who assaulted a reporter to be formally booked on assault charge, months after his election
A judge has ordered Montana Rep. Greg Gianforte to be photographed and fingerprinted for assaulting a reporter in May, opening the door for the congressman’s mug shot to be plastered in opponents’ campaign ads in next year’s election. […] The day after the assault, Gianforte defeated Democrat Rob Quist in the special election to replace Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke…
On Immigration, Poetry Isn’t Policy, but Poetry Matters, by David French, National Review
The conservative National Review offers an interesting take on what happens when a reporter relies on poetry to make a point. During a White House press conference yesterday, CNN Reporter Jim Acosta prefaced a question by reading “The New Colossus,” then asked White House aide Stephen Miller how he could support a policy that goes…
U.S. Press Freedom Tracker
It’s frustrating and terrifying that the current cultural climate makes this website necessary. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is a project that aims to comprehensively document press freedom incidents in the United States — such as the arrests of journalists, seizures of their equipment, interrogations and searches at the U.S. border, subpoenas to testify about…