‘A Hidden History Runs Through Our Social Movements in This Country’
“There’s a long tradition in American economic history, and the economic history of the world, of cooperative enterprise, businesses owned and governed by the people they serve.”
Music as a Weapon? It’s No Joke
Joking about pop music that’s so bad it’s painful helps obscure the all-too-serious use of sound as a weapon that causes actual pain.
FAIR TV: Hearing Malala’s Message, Zakaria’s CEO Panel, Networks Do Self-Promotion
US media ignore one part of Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai’s message. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria talks about inequality and Occupy Wall Street with….three CEOs? And corporations view the news networks they own as vehicles to promote their other properties.
Occupy and Inequality: Zakaria Listens to CEOs
CNN host Fareed Zakaria dedicated a portion of his October 13 CNN show to a discussion of income inequality and the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. The guests? Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein and two other CEOs.
Phony Occupy Link to Weapons Cache
It’s bad enough to treat a unsubstantiated claim by a partisan news outlet, with a record of sensational misinformation on the same subject, as a relevant fact in a story. But how do you justify using this junk journalism as a chance to let a source give free rein to his fantasies of how Occupy might take a turn towards violence?
NYT Buries Occupy Wall Street
The Paper of Record has spoken: We didn’t think much of Occupy before, and now what we think is that it’s over. The day before Occupy activists were gathering to mark the movement’s one-year anniversary, Times columnist Joe Nocera wrote (9/16/12): “For all intents and purposes, the Occupy movement is dead.” Before the collapse of […]
At NPR, You Can Take Money From Banks—Just Don’t Protest Them
Even if you’re not an expert in media ethics, you’d probably agree that a show about finance and business exclusively sponsored by one giant bank has an obvious conflict. The fact that the show is on public radio might make such an arrangement all the more curious. And the fact that the host of the […]
The Broken Link Between OWS and a Murder
“OWS MURDER LINK.” That’s how the New York Post‘s front page (7/11/12) announced a report that DNA from a 2004 crime scene had supposedly been matched with DNA from a chain used to hold open a subway gate in an Occupy Wall Street protest. Inside, under the headline “OWS Link to ’04 Gal Slay,” the […]
May Day Media
With Occupy Wall Street making its May Day comeback, what did the corporate media have to say? Take a look at the New York Times story (5/2/12), which was stuffed in the Metro section and focused on… well, take a look at the headline: About half of the article is focused on arrests, “occasionally bloody […]
No Protests From the Left—According to Progressive TV Guest
Here’s something you don’t see very often—a progressive person of color on a Sunday morning chat show. There was Van Jones on ABC‘s This Week on April 1. Also there? Right-wing firebrand Ann Coulter. Huh. But it was something that Jones said that caught my attention. Well, you know, I think that probably the majority […]
Bizarre Record of Fox’s Rape-to-Be-Expected Pundit
Liz Trotta, a Fox News contributor and former Washington Times editor, drew attention this week (2/12/12) when she suggested that women serving in the U.S. military should expect to be sexually assaulted by their male counterparts: But while all of this is going on, just a few weeks ago, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta commented on […]
‘Bard of the 1 Percent’ Sings the Same Tune
New York Times columnist David Brooks, who’s been called the “bard of the 1 percent” for his writings in defense of the economic elite, is at it again–telling people not to worry about the concentration of wealth at the very top of the income scale. Brooks writes in his January 31 column that the claim […]
Driving Out Politics From Privately Owned Public Space
The Winter Garden is one of New York City’s largest and most beautiful indoor public spaces. Graced by giant palm trees that would look impressive on Sunset Boulevard and a vast skylight that provides year-round balmy sunlight, this crossroads of Manhattan’s Battery Park City became a symbol of Downtown’s rebirth when it was reconstructed after […]
Covering OWS, With Expert Commentary by Andrew Breitbart
USA Today‘s Rick Hampson has a piece today (12/7/11) on Occupy Wall Street’s Occupy Our Homes actions, which include efforts to move families into vacant housing. This coverage is a good sign if you think there is still something happening with this movement after the evictions in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. But why […]
It’s True: Cops Beat Protesters Even Before OWS
New York Times media reporter David Carr has written some interest pieces on Occupy Wall Street. His piece today tries to work out where things go from here, but one comment in the piece about how Occupy Wall Street compares with protests of the past caught my attention: There were citizens screaming invective about the […]
The Kind of Journalist Authorities Don’t Mind Not Suppressing
When the authorities are going out of their way to keep your journalistic colleagues from witnessing what they’re up to, yet they reach out to give a ringside seat–what does that say about your reporting? That’s the question raised by a blog post by Yves Smith (Naked Captialism, 11/16/11) that makes the case that the […]
Crackdown on Journalists at Occupy Wall Street
One more thing about free speech hero Michael Bloomberg’s shutdown of Occupy Wall Street. During the early morning raid on the Occupy Wall Street camp journalists were blocked from covering much of what was happening. Josh Stearns from Free Press has a rundown—as he points out, “By dawn, 10 journalists, including reporters from NPR, the […]
WaPo and Occupy ‘Infestation’
All right, which newspaper posed this question about the Occupy protests today: Is this an occupation or an infestation? Has to be the New York Post, right? Nope–they wouldn’t include a question mark. That’s the Washington Post, which went on to report that “recent news updates from Occupy protests read like a crime blotter.” And […]
Michael Bloomberg, Free Speech Hero?
The New York Times, writing about Bloomberg’s crackdown on Occupy Wall Street, said this: For the mayor, a champion of the First Amendment…. I am not sure what is required to deserve the title of “champion,” but was it a different Michael Bloomberg who was mayor during the 2004 Republican convention, which saw mass arrests, […]
NY Post to Mayor: Reclaim New York’s ‘Dignity’
Yesterday the New York Post—Rupert Murdoch’s down-market tabloid, for those who are blessed to live beyond its circulation area—ran this front-page editorial demanding that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg shut down the Occupy Wall Street encampment to reclaim the city’s “dignity”: Uhh…. that message would be coming from the paper that ran this dignified cover, […]
