media

By Trevor Timm: The Supreme Court today rejected New York Times reporter James Risen’s appeal of a 4th Circuit decision that ruled the government can compel him to reveal his source under oath. The case, one of the most important for reporter’s privilege in decades, means that Risen has exhausted his appeals and must now […]

censorship

No Regime? Egyptian Satirist Bassem Youssef Cancelled b/c “Enormous Pressure”

contributors

So, no regime then? Jon Stewart was on al-Barnamag [“The Program”] last year this time and remarked of the then Muslim Brotherhood government’s prosecution of his Egyptian counterpart, Bassem Youssef, for political libel of President Muhammad Morsi, “If your regime can’t handle a joke, you don’t have a regime.” AFP reports: Egypt satirist who mocked […]

journalism

#YesAllWomen Changes the Story in Wake of Isla Vista Massacre

contributors

By Rebecca Solnit via Tomdispatch.com It was a key match in the World Cup of Ideas. The teams vied furiously for the ball. The all-star feminist team tried repeatedly to kick it through the goalposts marked Widespread Social Problems, while the opposing team, staffed by the mainstream media and mainstream dudes, was intent on getting […]

journalism

Did Benghazi Obsession cause Fox ‘News’ Ratings to Plummet 27% in May?

contributors

Fox News ratings dropped 27% in May, and there were double-digit falls across many of their top shows. The ratings drop is year over year, with a 27% drop in total viewership, but a 25% drop among younger viewers. With the younger viewers, these are…

Democracy

Press Freedom is the Issue, not Glenn Greenwald’s Personality

contributors

By Barry Eisler via Freedom of the Press Foundation: One of the most fascinating aspects of Glenn Greenwald’s journalism is the way it provokes various people who think of themselves as journalists to reveal their actual priorities. I wrote about this at length last week in a response to Michael Kinsley’s non-review review of Greenwald’s […]

Crime

Not Snowden but Keith Alexander: Hero or Traitor (the debate we should be having)

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole NBC News’s Brian Williams interviewed Edward Snowden in Moscow on Wednesday night. But then Mr. Williams followed it up with a panel discussion of whether Snowden is a hero or traitor. It was a cowardly and venal thing to do, and Mr. Williams should be ashamed of himself. By framing the post-interview […]

China

The NSA Effect: China tells its banks to remove IBM servers as Spyware

contributors

THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT has urged its banks to stop using servers built by IBM because it believes that they might be used for espionage. According to unnamed sources cited by Bloomberg, the People’s Bank of China and the Chinese Ministry of Finance…

Constitution

‘Journalist’ Michael Kinsley says Gov’t should make Publishing Decisions

contributors

Glenn Greenwald spends the last third of his excellent new book, “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State”, exposing the mentality and function of pseudo-journalists like David Gregory, who are in fact better understood…

Apartheid

Anthony Bourdain on Palestinians: “The World has visited many terrible things on” them, robbed of their Humanity

contributors

Anthony Bourdain: it is something we do all the time: “Show regular people doing everyday things–cooking and enjoying meals… It is a measure, I guess, of how twisted and shallow our depiction of the people is that these images come as a shock to so many. The world has visited many terrible things on the […]