media 
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SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
3/19/2023
How One News Desk Got Iraq Right When Others Failed
by John Walcott
The former head of Knight-Ridder's national security desk explains how his agency passed by the agency bigshots, interviewed experts and analysts closer to the intelligence, and followed up on red flags that others missed in the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, instead of protecting their access to the administration.
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SOURCE: New York Times
3/10/2023
Teaching, Writing, and Hollywood IP Battles (and Maybe a Workout) are All in a Day's Work
Natalia Petrzela's work as a historian goes far outside the classroom and the library, into the practice of the fitness culture she researches, social media, podcasting, and the politics of intellectual property on streaming services.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
3/7/2023
Fox's Handling of the "Big Lie" was Cowardly, but Not Unusual
by Kathryn J. McGarr
News organizations' standards of objectivity have long allowed public figures and politicians to proclaim lies without pushback, leaving the public to be arbiters of truth and falsity.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
3/8/2023
Fox News Texts Show Long History of Ideological Media
The revelation that Fox hosts promoted what they knew were lies about the 2020 election reflects what Nicole Hemmer calls a 70-year effort by the right to sow distrust in mainstream media.
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SOURCE: Substack
3/6/2023
On "Cancel Culture"
by Thomas Zimmer
The alleged "cancellation" of Scott Adams shows that many pundits decrying "cancel culture" from the center are actually more interested in holding the power to declare ideas out of bounds than in letting the marketplace of ideas sort them out.
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SOURCE: Foreign Policy
2/23/2023
20 Years After Iraq Invasion, Need for Dissenting Perspectives is Clear
by Matthew Duss
A left foreign policy analyst argues that labeling opposition to Ukraine's NATO membership as "pro-Putin" echoes the worst moves of the runup to the Iraq war, and that good policy grows from open discussion.
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SOURCE: NPR
2/13/2023
Evidence of Political Pressure in Firing of West Va. Radio Reporter
Insiders claim a growing pattern of political pressure from the office of Governor Jim Justice to use the threat of defunding to defang public radio coverage of state affairs.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
1/30/2023
America's Lost Faith in the News
by Louis Menand
Politicians' success in demonizing and discrediting unfriendly news media threatens to undermine "the facts" as a shared social reality. Is anyone prepared to live in that world?
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SOURCE: The Nation
1/23/2023
Posthumous Limbaugh Book Skirts His Toxic Legacy
The collection of transcripts from Rush's radio program emphasizes the positive ways he built solidarity with his audience while occluding the negative ways he maintained it by stirring resentments against others and lying about his political opponents.
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SOURCE: Mother Jones
1/26/2023
Remembering Victor Navasky: Editor was a "Ringmaster" at "The Nation"
As the editor of the left-leaning magazine, Navasky was comfortable allowing (and sometimes encouraging) liberals, socialists, and radicals of other varieties duke out their intraleft disagreements in print.
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SOURCE: Jewish Currents
1/19/2023
Antisemitism is Resurgent. Why are News Organizations Screwing Up the Story?
When journalists turn to representatives of legacy Jewish organizations as authentic voices of American Jewry, they often end up generating reporting about antisemitism that strips away historical nuance and fails to accurately describe the forces driving attacks on Jews today.
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SOURCE: Nieman Lab
1/10/2023
The Good News and the Bad News about (Mis)Information – Historians Included
Recent studies of media consumption and conspiracy theory adherence suggest misinformation is not terribly influential on political behavior. Unfortunately, neither is mythbusting, given the social and cognitive complexity of belief.
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SOURCE: New York Magazine
1/3/2023
Ms. Magazine Turns 50
The current editors of Ms. consider the publication's legacy as a maker, not just a reporter, of news.
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SOURCE: Vox
12/20/2022
Are Conservatives Really Pulling Ahead in the Comedy Race?
Does a ratings boost for Greg Gutfeld's late-night show mean that today's conservatives are the funny ones and liberals are too "woke" to laugh? Answering the question means looking past party loyalty to ask what makes humor, says humor historian Teresa Prados-Terreira.
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SOURCE: Politico
11/2/2022
Musk Just Latest in Right's Push To Acquire Media Platforms
by A.J. Bauer
The history of conservative media acquisitions reflects the anxiety on the right that their ideas are broadly unpopular.
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SOURCE: Current
9/14/2022
How a Major Christian News Organization Lost its Way
by Marvin Olasky
The Christian news magazine "World" once combined a religious perspective with editorial independence and investigative reporting. Today's Christian nationalist climate has no room for that, says the former editor.
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SOURCE: The Nation
8/31/2022
Emmett Till's Lynching Catalyzed the Reactionary Denunciation of the "Liberal Media"
by Chris Lamb
To reactionary Southerners and white supremacists, media accounts of Emmett Till's murder had to be dismissed as "fake news" and countered with their own misinformation.
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8/28/2022
Who and What to Believe about Ukraine?
by Walter G. Moss
Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war test our ability as citizens to be aware of our biases in search of information and understanding.
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SOURCE: Mother Jones
8/24/2022
How Stokely Carmichael Inspired the Most Boring Channel on TV
Brian Lamb saw the Black Power advocate speak in a church in the 1960s, and then saw the news media distort his speech. This experience led to CSPAN, the anti-sound bite contribution to public discourse.
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SOURCE: WORT
8/12/2022
Nicole Hemmer on Alex Jones and the Right-Wing Media Machine
Will Alex Jones's expensive defeat in court slow down the spread of conspiratorialism in right-wing media?
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