Our weekly roundup of news found at the intersection of media, politics, policy and technology, from the Shorenstein Center and from around the web.
News from Faculty and Fellows
Charlottesville Response Is Front and Center at Hutchins Forum. Leah Wright Rigueur, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, participated in a panel discussion with Charles Blow, Alan Dershowitz, and others. Regarding the removal of Confederate statues, Rigueur said, “this is not about whitewashing history, it’s about correcting history.” She also discussed free speech on college campuses. Watch the video of the panel.
The victims of white supremacist terrorism are often white. Derrick Z. Jackson, fall 2016 fellow, writes that “Until white Americans send a majority message directly to Trump that his appeals to hate are unacceptable, Charlottesville won’t change anything.”
It’s Time to Call Nazis ‘Nazis.’ Diane McWhorter, A.M. Rosenthal Writer-in-Residence at the Shorenstein Center in 2014, writes that “21st-century America is not 20th-century Germany, and historical analogies are inherently non-literal. But roots of both republican meltdowns can be found in the annals of global capitalism.”
Echoes of Vietnam in Trump’s Afghan about-face. Walter Shapiro, spring 2005 fellow, writes that “the idea that the military’s hands have been tied in Afghanistan comes right out of the playbook of Vietnam hawks.”
Trump Embraces the Moral Ambiguity of a Halfway War. David Rohde, spring 2005 fellow, writes that “The unveiling of Trump’s muddle-through strategy showed that his campaign promises about Afghanistan were as illusory as his oaths to bring back high-paying manufacturing jobs, solve health care, and fill America with a sense of pride.”
With Bannon Back at Breitbart, What’s Next? Dan Kennedy, spring 2016 fellow, expects that “Bannon will be going after the people whom he considered to be diluting the nationalist agenda that Trump has been articulating.”
Study asks whether reporters are influenced by who they follow on Twitter. John Wihbey, consultant for Journalist’s Resource, co-authored a study that found that “journalists from right-leaning outlets usually have a right-leaning followership (those they follow), while those from left-leaning outlets tend to have a left-leaning followership,” a finding that had not been quantified before.
Resources and Insight
Mistrust, Efficacy and the New Civics — a whitepaper for the Knight Foundation. Ethan Zuckerman explains why “journalism has a great deal in common with other large institutions that are suffering declines in trust.”
The Solutions Journalism Network has launched a set of new tools on its website www.solutionsjournalism.org, including training modules and reporting tips, a toolkit focusing on the core considerations in solutions reporting, and connections to local communities.
President Trump and the Press
- Has the Trump presidency permanently changed how the media cover the presidency? From the Los Angeles Times.
- Trump Takes Aim at the Press, With a Flamethrower, from The New York Times.
- Master Trump’s game: Don’t get pissed. Do journalism. From Columbia Journalism Review.
Press Freedom and Risks to Journalists
- In Charlottesville and elsewhere, U.S. journalists are being assaulted while covering the news, from Poynter.
- Boston authorities should not have blocked media from covering protest, from Columbia Journalism Review.
- My friend Kim Wall’s disappearance in Denmark shows: female journalists face danger everywhere, from The Guardian.
Reporting on Hate
- White-supremacy threat demands its own beat reporters, from Columbia Journalism Review.
- With data from Google News, this new tool makes it easier for reporters to track hate crimes nationwide, from Nieman Lab.
Online Platforms and Ethics
- Where Is the Line? Charlottesville Forces Media and Tech Companies to Decide, from The New York Times.
- Platforms wield a worrying amount of power over news and information. Can a more decentralized web help? From Nieman Lab.
- How Hate Groups Forced Online Platforms to Reveal Their True Nature, from The New York Times Magazine.
- The dilemma of the dark web: protecting neo-Nazis and dissidents alike, from The Guardian.
- Who Owns the Internet? What Big Tech’s monopoly powers mean for our culture, from The New Yorker.
Conservative Media
- Bannon plots Fox competitor, global expansion, from Axios.
- Sinclair Defends Tribune Acquisition as Crucial for Broadcast TV’s Future, from
News Business
- Brands are now blacklisting mainstream news sites, including Fox News, from Digiday.
- Industry Insight: Newsrooms Might Have to Get Bigger, Go Deeper to Unlock Reader Revenue, from Editor & Publisher.
- Facebook just made it easier for users to tell news organizations apart, from Poynter.
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