investigative journalism

Bury My Journalism At Bended Knee: The Press And Donald Trump

A journalist who speaks truth to power, not a megaphone, not a stenographer. That, hopefully, would be the identity a conscientious journalist would seek; such has not been the case with the US press corps for ever so long. (The Iraq War is the prime exhibit in this brief, but many others can be foundContinue reading “Bury My Journalism At Bended Knee: The Press And Donald Trump”

Margaret Sullivan Won’t Miss Five Things About The NYT; Here Are Two More

Margaret Sullivan–“the media columnist for The Washington Post….former Public Editor of The New York Times“–lists the five things she won’t miss about the New York Times: 1. The inherent tension of the job. The whole concept of coming to work every day to handle complaints, and maybe to criticize work done at the next deskContinue reading “Margaret Sullivan Won’t Miss Five Things About The NYT; Here Are Two More”

Kathryn Schulz’s Confused Take On The Steven Avery Case

In a rather confused take on the Steven Avery case–the subject of the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer, Kathryn Schultz of the New Yorker writes: “Making a Murderer” raises serious and credible allegations of police and prosecutorial misconduct in the trials of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey. It also implies that that misconduct was malicious.Continue reading “Kathryn Schulz’s Confused Take On The Steven Avery Case”

Aristophanes’ Sausage-Seller and the Tea Partier

I have just finished writing a draft review of Lee Fang‘s The Machine: A Field Guide to the Resurgent Right (New York: The New Press, 2013); it will appear shortly in The Washington Spectator. As I read Fang’s depressing history of the corporate-funded ‘New Right’ that has derailed the Obama presidency, looked over its roguesContinue reading “Aristophanes’ Sausage-Seller and the Tea Partier”

Journalism Should Embody Anarchist Ideals

Bill Keller‘s lengthy online exchange with Glenn Greenwald makes for very interesting reading. It illuminates a great deal, especially the modern ‘mainstream’ understanding of journalism–as ‘objective’ reporter of ‘facts’–and its supposed ‘responsibilities’ and the ‘alternative’ view of journalism as fundamentally adversarial, beholden to no nation or state, dedicated to exposing the machinations of the powerful.Continue reading “Journalism Should Embody Anarchist Ideals”