The major U.S. news media is again focusing Campaign 2012 on personalities, gaffes and poll-measured momentum, a superficiality that has contributed to America’s dysfunctional politics for several decades. But ex- FBI agent Coleen Rowley describes her work with an anti-war…
Category: Media
Back to Big Media’s Political Circus
As the United States careens toward another economic crisis, the big-time U.S. news media is back to trivializing politics as some inconsequential sporting event where the competing sides score points measured by daily tracking polls. Danny Schechter dissects the madness.
Life in an Age of Looting
The ugly scenes of rioting and arson in Great Britain are a preview of the societal breakdown that can be expected from today’s staggeringly inequitable economic/political system, where stock-market sharpies get away with plundering pension funds but the poor get nailed for looting consumer goods,…
Mocking the Gaza Flotilla
A small flotilla carrying human rights and peace activists to Israel-blockaded Gaza was itself blockaded in Greece after intense diplomatic pressure from Washington and Tel Aviv. But the Israeli news media continues to heap ridicule on the passengers. Two of them,…
Wrestling Over the Debt Ceiling
As Republicans threaten to throw the U.S. economy into a new crisis by not raising the debt ceiling, Democrats have given ground time and again, erasing one line in the sand after another. But is this self-inflicted crisis real or…
Who Commits Terrorism?
Exclusive: A right-wing Christian nationalist has claimed credit for the terrorist attacks in Norway, killing at least 76 people. Though his writings show that Anders Behring Breivik was inspired by anti-Muslim extremists in the United States, that bigotry also made Muslims…
The Blue Eyes of Terror
On Friday, as news spread of the ghastly terror attacks in Norway, U.S. cable news outlets jumped to the conclusion that Muslims must have done it. Many talking heads were stunned to learn that the confessed killer was a blond,…
Fixing the American Narrative
We all are familiar with the age-old warnings about what happens if we don’t know the past, or if we base assumptions on foundations made of sand, or if we delude ourselves into thinking that safeguards exist when they have…
The Rise of Pro-Democracy Journalism
The old idea of journalism arming the people with facts they need for democracy to work has been betrayed by major U.S. news outlets, like the New York Times and Washington Post, which have instead aligned themselves with national power under…
The Complexity of Mandela
Nelson Mandela was one of the last century’s great freedom fighters, taking on the evils of white supremacy in South Africa and defying the cold-hearted Realpolitik of Washington. But his triumph meant that the Western media would water down his…