Freedom of the Press Roughed Up in U.S.

Thanks to the deplorable treatment of journalists during OWS, the U.S. drops in the Press Freedom Index; turns out, it’s more environmentally friendly to reuse an old building than to build a new one in its place; and a peaceful Occupy L.A. protester is charged with lynching. These discoveries and more below.

On a regular basis, Truthdig brings you the news items and odds and ends that have found their way to Larry Gross, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication. A specialist in media and culture, art and communication, visual communication and media portrayals of minorities, Gross helped found the field of gay and lesbian studies.

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After OWS, U.S. Drops in Press Freedom Rankings The United States tumbled 27 places in the latest edition of the annual Press Freedom Index, thanks in large part to the rough treatment of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street protests that took place around the country this past year.

The Most Environmental Building Is the One We’ve Already Built Reusing an old building pretty much always has less of an impact on the environment than tearing it down, trashing the debris, clearing the site, crafting new materials and putting up a replacement from scratch.

US/Israel: Iran NOT Building Nukes … A consensus seems to be emerging among the intelligence and military agencies of the United States – and Israel – that Iran has NOT made a decision to build a nuclear weapon. In recent days, that judgment has been expressed by high-profile figures in the defense establishments of the two countries – U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Happy Birthday to Egypt’s Doomed Revolution Exactly one year ago today, I stood in front of the Lawyers Syndicate in downtown Cairo and watched as a few thousand protesters suddenly streamed into the area from the north, overwhelmed Egypt’s notoriously violent riot police, and pushed onward towards Tahrir Square.

One bad barrel spoils the Apple The hero of Mitch Daniels’s Republican address to the nation was Steve Jobs.

Bill Clinton Helped Mitt Romney Escape the Tax Man Why do the 1 percent get off so easily? Bill Clinton deserves his fair share of the blame.

In Defense of Cynthia Nixon: Why ‘Born This Way’ Doesn’t Matter Cynthia Nixon is in hot water with some gays for comments she made to The New York Times about whether she “chose” to be gay, or was “born that way.”

Occupy Wall Street Protester Guilty of Lynching? You might think the protester, Sergio Ballesteros, attacked and hanged someone. After all, California’s anti-lynching law was designed to protect minority defendants in police custody from vigilante lynch-mobs. But no …

MIT Mints a Valuable New Form of Academic Currency The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has invented or improved many world-changing things—radar, information theory, and synthetic self-replicating molecules, to name a few. Last month the university announced, to mild fanfare, an invention that could be similarly transformative, this time for higher education itself.