|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Colm Toibin $19.99
By Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac $18.45
$23
|
|
|
|
 Screen capture of Google.com
|
By Amy Goodman — Wednesday, Jan. 18, marked the largest online protest in the history of the Internet. Websites from large to small “went dark” in protest of proposed legislation before the U.S. House and Senate that could profoundly change the Internet.
|

|
To protest two pieces of legislation that threaten the free and open Internet as we know it, thousands of websites, including Wikipedia, are taking themselves offline. Others, including Google, are asking users to take action. (more)
|
 Twitter
|
Rupert Murdoch is a surprisingly good tweeter, direct and revealing in his comments, but he is also the head of a media conglomerate, so when he loses his cool and fires off a shot at “[p]iracy leader” Google, it has reverberations beyond the nail salon.
|

|
Barricades in Zuccotti Park have finally come down, causing protesters to immediately reoccupy; in the face of budget cuts, some teachers opt to work for free; meanwhile, Kopimism, a new religion based on file-sharing, emerges. These discoveries and more after the jump.
Posted on Jan 10, 2012
READ MORE
|
 Peter Dutton (CC-BY)
|
Independent journalist Russ Baker has invited the 561 New York Times employees and retirees who wrote a letter of “dismay” to their publisher to quit the establishment and join us free barbarians of the Internet. “Why not, in this new world, take a risk to create a better journalism, one not owned by rich people or corporations?” asks Baker.
|
 Schröder+Schömbs (CC-BY-ND)
|
According to journalism prof Ted Gup, the prevalence of the word “like” in youth-speak is evidence that teachers have “condemned children to a common cluster of mediocrity.” But as linguist Geoffrey Nunberg pointed out a decade ago, “like” isn’t a tic or filler, it’s “a word with a point of view.” (more)
|
 AP
|
Tony Blankley, the “right” in KCRW’s “Left, Right & Center,” has died of stomach cancer. He was 62. Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer remembers his public radio sparring partner as “a conservative gentleman in the best sense. Tony was always well-informed, decent, with a wry sense of humor. I never knew him to lower his standards. It was a pleasure jousting with him.”
|
|
Randall Enos, Cagle Cartoons —
Posted on Jan 5, 2012
READ MORE
|

|
It takes master documentarian Adam Curtis only five minutes to explain what Rupert Murdoch’s war on elitism (and taste) has to do with Google.
|
 Twitter
|
During his first few days on the social network, the mogul promoted “We Bought a Zoo,” told Iowans to consider Rick Santorum, praised President Obama (“decision on terrorist detention very courageous - and dead right!”) and called education America’s “absolute biggest crisis. No read, no write, no jobs.” (more)
|

|
C-SPAN goes in-depth with Chris Hedges during this three-hour interview, probing the author’s entire body of work. It is a comprehensive and fascinating discussion with one of the most important reporters on what he characterizes as our collapsing corporate empire. Hedges’ column returns next Monday.
|
|
Pat Bagley, Cagle Cartoons, Salt Lake Tribune —
Posted on Dec 24, 2011
READ MORE
|
 Kevin Dooley (CC-BY)
|
By David Sirota — It’s a holiday tradition. Every December, with media charlatans turning the key, the fake outrage machine rumbles back to life.
|

|
An Israeli woman is relegated to the back of the bus by a group of Orthodox Jews; New York celebs party with the Occupiers; and studying fish may be the key to understanding why uninformed voters are a necessary evil in our democracy. These discoveries and more after the jump.
|
 AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
|
By Robert Scheer — What’s alarming is the ease with which an otherwise deadlocked Congress that can’t manage minimal funding for job creation passes a bill that threatens the foundations of our republican form of government.
|

|
John McCain and several other senators are trying to pass a measure to include the United States as part of the battlefield in the “war on terror,” allowing the U.S. military to jail American citizens without a trial; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated to an enemy of public education; meanwhile, David Cameron was trying to blackmail the rest of Europe. These discoveries and more after the jump.
|
 AP / Sergey Ponomarev
|
By Ivo Mijnssen — The largest anti-government protests in more than a decade have created a new political dynamic in Russia, but there is no real alternative to Vladimir Putin.
|
 Photo of a Ramparts cover by SPJ
|
By Peter Richardson — Dugald Stermer, illustrator and visionary art director of Ramparts magazine, the legendary San Francisco muckraker, died last Friday after a long illness. He was 74.
|

|
American news media outlets such as Time and Newsweek are keeping the U.S. in the dark about world issues; a Silicon Valley startup has dreamed up a ship for international techies to avoid immigration problems; and Wi-Fi and cellphones are making us sick—or are they? These discoveries and more after the jump.
|
 Preston Rhea (CC-BY-SA)
|
By Barry Lando — For several years now the Pakistanis have found China a very willing and increasingly powerful counterweight to the Americans and their often strident political demands.
|
 David Wiley (CC-BY)
|
By David Sirota — Amid fears of high youth unemployment creating a “lost generation,” there is suddenly a bright spot: Apparently, fewer young people are going to work in the industry that destroyed our economy.
|

|
Occupy has opened up the conversation about economic inequality in the U.S.; UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi has had her hand in more than just the UC system; and a woman says she had an affair with Herman Cain for more than a decade. These discoveries and more after the jump.
|
 Ed Schipul (CC-BY-SA)
|
In a recent speech, Dan Rather, once one of the few voices trusted to moderate our in-home information supply, called the current state of the news business “upside down and backwards.” Inspired by Occupy Wall Street, Rather issued a call to get back to proper journalism, and he suggested that the job would fall to independent journalists.
|
 Thomas Galvez (CC-BY)
|
In the spirit of fostering a more “socialist culture,” the Chinese government is banning commercials that interrupt television dramas. Judging by this BBC report, China’s TV executives seem much more concerned with lost revenue than with government interference.
|
 © Jeff Pappas
|
Some of the nation’s most prestigious news organizations, including AP and The New York Times, are condemning New York City’s treatment of the media, writing in a letter that “police actions of last week have been more hostile ...” (more)
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Will the Occupy movement play into the hands of its enemies by living up to the stereotypes they are trying to create? Or will it instead move to a new phase that builds on its success?
|
 Kenny Sun (CC-BY)
|
By Amy Goodman — We got word just after 1 a.m. Tuesday that New York City police were raiding the Occupy Wall Street encampment.
|
|
By David Sirota — Something amazing happened: For 10 whole seconds, the local reporter on my TV screen actually talked about the realities of the recession.
|

|
This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: David Lazarus tracks the cash from phone and bank fees; good news for unions; moving money out of big banks; anarchy in the USA, and “digital parasites.”
|
 Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey (CC-BY)
|
This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: David Lazarus tracks the cash from phone and bank fees; good news for unions; moving money out of big banks; anarchy in the USA, and “digital parasites.”
Posted on Nov 11, 2011
READ MORE
|
 AP / Matt Rourke
|
By Mark Heisler — These days you don’t get due process of the law until long after you have gotten due process of us ... and the “us” isn’t our rational side, but our bloodthirsty one, as presented by media.
|

|
Last weekend former Labor Secretary Reich and Truthdig Editor Scheer, who, in his own words, got a little wound up, were among the luminaries teaching in at the Occupy L.A. encampment.
|
 Wikimedia Commons / SusanLesch (CC-BY-SA)
|
By Ruben Luengas — It is assumed, as a divine command, that the journalist should be “impartial, objective, balanced and fair” as a prerequisite for being a true “professional.”
|
 Bob Jagendorf (CC-BY)
|
By William Pfaff — The theme of most political and social commentary is that things are more complicated than you think. For once, I wish to write that things are simpler than you think.
|

|
MTV is developing reality shows inspired by Occupy Wall Street; the tea party turns its back on Michele Bachmann; and a British cleric resigns rather than retract his support of the Occupy London protests. These discoveries and more, after the jump.
|
|
By David Sirota — On cable TV, “national news” is a euphemism for New York- and D.C.-focused content engineered primarily by a closed ecosystem of East Coast elites who believe the only things that matter are Manhattan gossip and Beltway games.
|
 Paul Weiskel (CC-BY)
|
By Glenn Greenwald, TomDispatch —
As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious.
|
 AP / Mary Altaffer
|
By Christopher Ketcham — The occupiers have made it known in a most disrespectful manner that the parasite class is not welcome anymore. That’s a good start.
|
 Vincent Desjardins (CC-BY)
|
“Why not occupy newsrooms?” That’s the question posed by David Carr, writing in The New York Times about the obscene salaries and bonuses (tens of millions of dollars in some cases) paid to newspaper executives in compensation for “picking the carcass clean.” (more)
|
 AP / Andrew Burton
|
By Robert Scheer — Funny, he doesn’t look like Marie Antoinette. But when former New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller asks his readers if they are “bored by the soggy sleep-ins and warmed-over anarchism of Occupy Wall Street,” it displays the arrogance of disoriented royal privilege.
|

|
This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: It’s all about Occupy Wall Street, which Pulitzer Prize winner and guest David Cay Johnston says is unlike any movement he’s covered. Also: voices from Occupy L.A., Nomi Prins, Scott Tucker and the NYPD arrests journalists.
|
 Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey
|
This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: It’s all about Occupy Wall Street, which Pulitzer Prize winner and guest David Cay Johnston says is unlike any movement he’s covered. Also: voices from Occupy L.A., Nomi Prins, Scott Tucker and the NYPD arrests journalists.
Posted on Oct 13, 2011
READ MORE
|
 AP / Khalil Hamra
|
By Lauren Unger-Geoffroy — How can the people who made this revolution of unity have been so betrayed?
|
 David Shankbone (CC-BY)
|
By Amy Goodman — Back when Barack Obama was still just a U.S. senator running for president, he told a group of donors in a New Jersey suburb, “Make me do it.”
|
 Illustration by Mr. Fish
|
By Chris Hedges — The occupation movement is an effort to take our country back. This is a goal the power elite cannot comprehend. That is why they keep asking what the demands are. They don’t understand what is happening. They are deaf, dumb and blind.
|
 Nytimes.com
|
Some graphic designers have come up with various proposals, but one wonders whether the motley crew of anti-corporate urban campers would welcome such a commercial device.
|

|
The Occupy Wall Street protests are making more than just a splash; LGBT activists join the Occupy Wall Street protests to assert their rights; meanwhile, a secret panel places Americans on a “kill list.” These discoveries and more after the jump.
Posted on Oct 8, 2011
READ MORE
|
 Flickr / LianaAn (CC-BY-SA)
|
Some say the media has done a less-than-stellar job of reporting on the Occupy Wall Street protests these last few weeks, but the 99 percent found a way to circumvent that: They published and distributed their own newspaper Saturday, aptly named The Occupied Wall Street Journal. (more)
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|