Here is a link to a Washington Post commentary by George Will. And here is a citation: “The report was so “seismic” — Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s word — that Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration released it on Fourth of July weekend, 1966, hoping it would not be noticed. But the Coleman Report did disturb various dogmatic slumbers and vested interests. And 50 years on, it is pertinent to today’s political debates
Read MoreMedia Watch
The Planet and the Donald
A New York Times opinion editorial, April 20th 2017: Will we recover from the Trump presidency? Perhaps not: The thing with climate change is we don´t have much time, and not much is happening — so what happens when what little is happening gets reversed? “President Trump’s environmental onslaught will have immediate, dangerous effects. He has vowed to reopen coal mines and moved to keep the dirtiest power plants open for many years
Read MoreTrump’s alternative realities
What to read and what to do about it – – – A Saturday morning ritual for many years, I read the New York Times more or less from cover to cover. When I can, I do it on paper. When I can’t, and that’s most of the time, I do it online. In recent years, I have started to prefer the online version even when the paper version is
Read MoreFresh Air Radio — on a Saturday
It´s the economy, stupid: Bill said it–did Hillary listen?Sometimes you wish Bill was back, but there´s another story I have in mind right here: Not the story of how Hillary Clinton failed to take Bill Clinton´s most important piece of insight with her into her own presidential bid. Not, the story of how her failing to address the fundamentals of economic inequality in a convincing manner, led to the election
Read MoreTrump Watch: Four years to come
Peoples´choice. I read, and I try to follow the arguments. All I know is that no one — absolutely no one – has a clue. What happens next, when a man is elected president one day and the day before was generally declared either “saviour” by half of the general public or “unfit for the office of president” by the entire establishment — except for Bob Dole, News Gingrich, Rudolph
Read MoreRhetoric and propaganda in journalism
Notes from a lecture: The main change since my first time doing this lecture, is the ways in which these concepts now have become commonplace in journalism critique. They did not use to be. But anyway — what is propaganda? And how does it relate to the study of rhetoric? A group of smart MA students meeting tomorrow to discuss the matter. By way of an illustration, here is one of
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