Fascinating art history — a thoughtful close reading of a painting. Great example of multimodal journalism. The clouds are heavy and black. A grim day for fighting. In the air is the smell of damp, and mortar fire. It’s a little after 10 a.m. on Sept. 13, 1759. The battle is almost over. In the…
I’m stunned by the writing. Here’s just a sample: Outside the Clark County Election Center in Las Vegas, a news conference was interrupted by a hysterical man in a sleeveless tank that read “BEER BBQ FREEDOM.” “The Biden crime family is stealing this election!” he screamed over and over again, as if repetition would make…
Here’s more evidence of just how crucial it is to the Trumpiverse to sustain the narrative that “the media” are the enemy. Earlier today, Trump’s Director of Communications Tim Murtaugh tweeted a picture of a Washington Times banner headline announcing the victory of “PRESIDENT GORE,” as “a reminder that the media doesn’t select the Present.”…
NEW YORK (AP) — ABC, CBS and NBC all cut away from President Donald Trump on Thursday as he spoke from the White House to make an unfounded accusation that the presidential election was being stolen from him. Trump had tried to commandeer the nation’s airwaves at a time when the evening newscasts are shown…
A new graphic for an existing handout, which I touched up a bit. When is the phrase “when asked about…” part of good news writing? Rarely. A journalist who uses the phrase “when asked about” (or a similar phrase) is carefully telling the reader, “I’m bending over backwards to make sure you don’t think I’m…
From The Brookings Institution (non-profit, deeply sourced factual writing; has been accused of both conservative and liberal bias; is cited in Congress about equally by conservative and liberal politicians; leans a bit left in terms of loaded language): American institutions are not perfect, of course. We all should want to improve scientific practices, remove bias…
It was a reporter’s bodyguard, not an anti-fascist activist, who shot and killed a right-wing demonstrator who had assaulted him. The viral spread of those false claims apparently alarmed the Denver Police Department, which had taken Dolloff into custody along with the journalist he was guarding and quickly determined that they were not left-wing…
Deadline seems to have briefly published, then taken down, a breaking news story including the sentence “Pence announced late Wednesday that he is among those who have tested positive in the ongoing White House coronavirus outbreak.” 1. Google search for “tom tapp coronavirus pence” shows a hit for a Deadline story with a headline prefaced…
I recall just sort of telling the editors that I would be taking this story, thank you very much. I started looking for this clipping when I reviewed The Measure of a Man for my ST:TNG Rewatch. Sadly The University Journal is no more. When I was at U.Va. it was one of two competing…
Headlines are important. (Send an editor some love.)
Those darned reporters. Always publishing newsworthy facts of national importance that powerful people would rather keep silent. When Hicks tested positive, she worried about others around her who might be infected, too, but the White House sought to keep that information from the public. Without Jennifer Jacobs, a dogged Bloomberg reporter who broke the story…
So negative! Why does the lying America-hating fake news media keep publishing stories that make Trump look bad? Where are the reports about superspreader events in the Obama White House? Where are the stories about Obama’s family members and staff ostentatiously refusing to take precautions that their own medical experts recommended that all Americans take?…
To defend Fox personality Tucker Carlson against a defamation lawsuit, Fox’s lawyers successfully argued that no reasonable viewer takes Carlson seriously. CBS | MSN This is a legal win for Fox, who convinced a judge that Carlson is “not stating actual facts” on his show. As Defendant notes, Mr. Carlson himself aims to “challenge[] political…
One of the weirder ways this debate has played out since Barrett was first discussed as a potential Supreme Court nominee is the fight over whether or not People of Praise, the group of which she is a member, is also one of the inspirations for The Handmaid’s Tale. In Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel (and its recent TV adaptation), fertile women are forced to live as childbearing slaves called handmaids. The book isn’t an established inspiration — but the story has developed legs anyway.
The State Department revoked a prestigious award from a Finnish journalist because of social media posts critical of President Donald Trump, according to a report from the State Department Office of Inspector General. Although the watchdog found that the State Department had acted within its “broad discretion” to rescind the award from Jessikka Aro, it also…
If you encounter the same story on different news sites, that does not mean you caught sneaky America-hating fake news “journalists” in the act. A meme I recently encountered shows three slightly different coronavirus headlines, all of which use the phrase “debate begins.” Text shared along with the meme suggests the repetition means the story…
CNN fact-checks a misleading Biden ad, which edited a Trump speech to make it look like he called coronavirus a Democratic hoax. To be clear, Trump’s informal and freewheeling style of speaking at rallies often leaves his exact meaning hard to pin down. But I agree with CNN that this ad misrepresents Trump’s intentions. …