Let them eat cellphones!
Today the Christian Science Monitor — which in general has been doing some outstanding reporting since going online-only last year — hands over a page in its business section to the old argument,...
View ArticleObama and poverty: National Review explains it all for you
I’m not sure exactly why NPR.org is running content from National Review Online, but if they’re all as unintentionally funny as this one, I’m all in favor of it. In today’s story, Michael Tanner of the...
View ArticleGive ‘em enough rope
From today’s Washington Post political blog: Republican leaders will soon be walking a tightrope when it comes to the looming spending debate. But at least it looks like the public is on their side. In...
View ArticleIt’s the Politics, Stupid (Extra!)
I have an article in the February issue of Extra! on how the U.S. news media largely ignored Republicans’ climate-change-denial rhetoric in the runup to last November’s elections, despite the fact that...
View ArticleNow online: It’s the Politics, Stupid (Extra!)
My Extra! magazine article on how U.S. media coverage of last fall’s elections ignored climate policy, previously print-only, is now online for free: You can read it here in its entirety, no...
View ArticleThe Fires This Time (Extra!)
How the news media dealt with — or failed to — the links between this spring’s severe weather and climate change: On April 14, a massive storm swept down out of the Rocky Mountains into the Midwest and...
View ArticleThe two days the media notices poverty
I’m on FAIR’s radio show Counterspin this week, discussing the media frenzy around last week’s release of census data showing poverty is dramatically on the rise in the U.S. But what did the news...
View ArticleWhat really happened on the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday?
If you’ve been following the Occupy Wall Street protests, either in person or online — and I imagine pretty much everyone has, especially after a top NYPD officer pepper-sprayed demonstrators and his...
View ArticlePoverty Rose Slower than Thought—Is that Good News? (City Limits)
Remember last Friday’s New York Times front-page story on how poverty rates aren’t as bad as we’d feared? Today the Census released the figures behind that piece, and it turns out even where the Times...
View ArticleJobs Are at Stake When Profits Are at Stake (Extra!)
Why oil pipelines are “job creators” but unemployment benefits aren’t. (Not yet online, either sign up for a cheap $15 one-year digital subscription or cool your heels for a month or so.) When debate...
View Article“Hope It’s in Your Backyard!” (Extra!)
One of the difficulties of reporting on climate change is its incremental nature: It’s hard to expect every media mention of someone driving a car or running an air conditioner to include a note about...
View ArticleEconomy Is the Issue That Isn’t (Extra!)
If there’s one thing the media seem certain about this election season, it’s that the choice between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will come down to one thing: the economy.The “rhetorical debate...
View ArticleSandy and Climate (Extra!)
Hurricane Sandy may be remembered not only as the most powerful storm ever to strike the Eastern seaboard, but also as the moment when a large segment of the U.S. media first allowed itself to say the...
View Article‘Sparing’ the 98 Percent by Taxing Them (Extra!)
When congressional Republicans and the White House agreed to their long- awaited “fiscal cliff” tax deal early on January 1, the news media celebrated it as a compromise that raised taxes on the rich...
View ArticleDisabled Are New Target for Charges of Cheating (Extra!)
It was a story that, if true, was certainly alarming: New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (12/9/12) reported that poor families in Appalachian Kentucky were pulling their kids out of literacy...
View ArticleNo Class Warfare, Please: We’re Americans (Extra!)
In a year that has featured increased coverage of rising economic inequality—helped along by President Barack Obama’s call to rebuild the economy from the “middle out,” and New York mayoral candidate...
View ArticleFlunking the Revised SATs (Extra!)
When the College Board announced on March 5 that it would be revising several elements of its SAT tests, including entirely scrapping the essay section—effectively reversing course on the biggest...
View ArticleComputer Error (Extra!)
It was “artificial intelligence history,” wrote CBSNews.com 6/9/14. We had crossed, according to New York Daily News columnist Harry Siegel 6/10/14, “the latest line we’d drawn separating man from...
View ArticleBoth Sides Now (Extra!)
Rep. Paul Ryan R.-Wisc. has made a career of proposing to “reform” US poverty programs mainly by trying to eliminate them: calling for “savings” in spending on the poor ThinkProgress, 5/8/12, declaring...
View ArticleThe Super Bowl Windfall Myth (FAIR)
With Super Bowl Sunday approaching, expect plenty of media reports on the projected economic windfall for host city Glendale, Arizona. Last year, when the NFL announced that its big game would provide...
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