South Africa is often viewed as the model for Africa’s future, an inspiring country that shed the curse of apartheid and white supremacy in a largely peaceful transition to majority black rule. But the corrupt economic culture of that earlier era…
Tag: Danny Schechter
At 93, Mandela Still Inspires
As he turns 93, Nelson Mandela can look back on an extraordinary life of accomplishment, as the world’s iconic leader on behalf of racial justice and individual liberty. A new book of quotations compiles some of what he has learned…
Forgetting South Africa’s Triumph
South Africa’s heroic defeat of white supremacy made the country and its leader, Nelson Mandela, icons across the world. However, the nation’s neoliberal economic policies have left many South Africans struggling in poverty and growing despair, as Danny Schechter reports…
In Case You Missed…
Some of our special stories in May offered insights into the killing of Osama bin Laden, the historical mysteries of past presidents John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, the curious visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the myths…
Spain’s Challenge to Austerity
Though the anti-austerity protests in Greece have grabbed most of the international attention, a similar movement rejecting neo-liberal economics and challenging the traditional political elites has emerged in the much larger nation of Spain, as Danny Schechter observed during a…
Skating to the Financial Abyss
Even as another potential Great Depression looms, the U.S. political/media system seems incapable of addressing the crisis and devising coherent answers. Instead, the old partisan and lobbying games dominate the political world and obsession with trivia commands the news media’s…
Is Unity Still a Value?
As the United States commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Civil War fought over the South’s secession in defense of slavery today’s irony is that the U.S. government is experiencing a resurgence of the divisions that empowered secession in 1861,…
Wall Street Was ‘Too Big to Jail’
HBO’s new docudrama on the Wall Street crash of 2008 details the frantic government efforts to stabilize the banking system and stave off a global depression, but the program misses the systemic fraud and other crimes that were at the…
Perp-Walking the Wrong Banker?
The sexual-assault arrest of International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn touched off a frenzy of media coverage in New York, including repeated showing of the French banker looking disheveled in handcuffs. But Danny Schechter pines for the day when the…
How Fox News Outfoxes Americans
To understand how so many average Americans can be duped into embracing right-wing positions that go against their own interests, you must look at how Fox News (and right-wing media outlets) use faux populism and phony outrage as propaganda techniques,…